Reprieve: A weekend away

I recently recieved an e-mail from the girl who was planning a 30th b-day getaway trip for a friend. Her message was an itinerary and menu for the weekend.

I almost cried when I read the menu.

Something about that menu awoke pure gratefulnes in me.

Frankly, I can’t remember the last time I was told what I was going to eat for the next three days.

I’m always the one being asked “what are we  gonna eat?”

I have three guys I regularly cook for. I enjoy being the meal planner but recently I had grown extremely burned out on going to the grocery store, making menus, keeping up with the coupon madness, AND trying to buy organic and healthy on a “processed food”-budget. STRESSFUL.

 

The meal plan was just one tiny piece of the reprieve I experienced while spending last Thursday through Sunday with eight girls on a beautiful lake-front Ranch in North Georgia. If you were to listen in on the soundtrack of our weekend you would  hear non-stop chatter – multiple conversations going on all the time – with belly laughter, several labor and delivery stories, mothering tales, some tears and regular exclamations of how healing it was to spend a  weekend away from our busy lives. Between us eight women we totaled 15 Children under 6 and two more on the way. Did I mention we are busy?

The similarities of going to camp abounded: sharing a bed with a girl friend and waking three mornings  to a house full of kindred women. It was medicine for my soul. The converstations brought out into the open those  things that weighed heavy on our hearts – true conversation was achieved on so many levels.

Nurturing just overflowed naturally form one mother-heart to another. I felt strengthened as we encouaged one another, relating with: “I know how  you feel“, “I have been there“, “We have the same situations“, and “We struggle with the same things“.

The ministry of women one to another is powerful. In all honestly, our heart-to-heart  conversations didn’t stop til I  pulled in my driveway and was dropped off.

I had a strange feeling this morning that I was understood, heard, and I didn’t feel the  need to talk to anyone. You think? I spent the entire weekend around amazing mothers and talked and listened for three straight days. My mind wonders to the marriage retreat I recently attended, one truth the lecturer explained was womens need for heart connections, as women we do this through talking.

I had simply had my fill.

If I asked my husband, he would probably say I have been unusually quiet today…

He even wanted to know all about the trip and I responded with a grin,“your not gonna believe it, but I think Im all talked out “…

“No”, he said, in a  sarcastic tone, “there is no way.”

Deciding to go on this trip was not an easy one for me, but in the end it was exactly what the doctor ordered – we even squeezed in manicures and pedicures, shopping, good eating ,and some good ‘ole photo booth fun.

I stumbled upon 1 Thessalonians 5:11 today: it says therefore encourage one another and build each other up. There was a panicky situation on the home front while I was away (another post for another day).  As soon as I was notified these women gathered around me, praying and encouraging. The situation resolved itself in 15 minutes, but I was very grateful for their support.  I definitely returned to home life recharged and rejuvenated!