SPC Women's Retreat: Never

Today I attended my first women's church retreat since I can remember. Sewickley Presbyterian Church has traditionally gone out to beautiful Ligonier, an hour's drive southeast of Pittsburgh, but this year they started alternating with a partial-day retreat on the church campus, and twice as many women were able to participate. I could have stayed home, working on the latest version of my book manuscript, which has been sitting in my email for more than a week. (I know you must be thinking, "I thought you finished the book, what more could there possibly be to do?" Well, after I submitted it  to the Press in March, a copyeditor make suggestions over the summer that I had to deal with, and I promise we're now on the final step, which is checking for errors and compiling an index.) Unfortunately, it meant I missed the local No Kings protests, but I've enjoyed looking through photos of crowds and signs online. Here's the sign that welcomed us.

Welcoming tableaux with encouraging words and lanterns to light our metaphorical paths. 

Despite our suburban setting, the retreat planners opted for a rustic-country-chic style, which just elevated the mood of the basement dining hall. They fed us a cold breakfast and soup for lunch. The theme was "Never," based on Tasha Layton's song "Never" which proclaims "Never forgotten / Never forsaken / Never abandoned."

Pastor Barb chose three Bible passages to illustrate these themes: the story of King David showing kindness to Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 9-13) instead of killing him as the heir of a rival; Jesus' uttering the first line of Psalm 22 as synecdoche for "hope still has the last word"; and the story of Moses' birth (Exodus 2:1-10). This last one was very personal for Pastor Barb, who shared some of the toughest moments in the long journey to adopt two of her children from Haiti, and for two of the women at my table, who had both adopted children from Russia. They talked about the courage it takes to give a child up to another family being the opposite of abandonment.

We played some ice-breaker activities like "That's so me!" and "What's in your purse?"

After lunch, we walked over to the Faith House for "prayer activities that sometimes look like crafts":

• just sit in stillness and rest
• read some psalms and then write one
• pray for your family over a heart-shaped keychain to take home as a reminder
• sit on a comfy sofa and do breath prayer
• put on a backpack full of rocks and meditate on the burdens you're carrying, then remove one of the rocks, write a burden on it, and leave it at the foot of the cross
• take-a-verse-leave-a-verse (see below)
• write a magnetic poem-prayer
• meditate in front of a mirror about replacing negative self-talk with positive affirmations
• decorate a ceramic tile with your "sins" (in marker) and then symbolically "wash them away" with alcohol
• pray for the least and last in the world while looking at photos
• make a Bible bookmark and take one someone make
• pray for someone who has hurt you and then bury those resentments with a heart-shaped seed card that will hopefully grow into flowers
• color part of a "Never" poster while thinking about the women of faith who have impacted you

I left the verse, "Cast all your worries upon God, because God cares for you." ~1 Peter 5:7

I took home, "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you, he will never leave your nor forsake you. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged." ~Deuteronomy 31:8

I brought my prayer beads (a craft from graduate school Bible study), seen here with two small devotional books for later: Chris Tiegreen's Moments of Hope: 40 Days of Encouragement for Women (Walk Thru the Bible) and Lysa Terkeurst's Is God Speaking to Me?

It was a good day of fellowship that I hope will bring me closer to my sisters in Christ.