Retreat!

"Dear Friends, since God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another."
1 John 4:11

When I was in Grad School we had all our classes in "cohorts" or in other words, the same 15 people. There were two cohorts that began my year and were in the two year program and we held our classes every Tuesday and Thursday night in rooms adjacent to one another. My cohort was a mishmash of ages, gender, and personalities...oh so different personalities! But what we had in common was a no nonsense approach to our studies and though encouraged to work as a team, we were all fairly independent and absolutely okay with that. The other cohort was all female, all younger, and well...they had pot lucks with one another and went on the occasional weekend get-away together. As our last night of class approached and the two groups came together to get instructions on Graduation procedure etc. the kind woman in charge asked one of my cohort members "are you in the cohort that goes on retreat?" and he most quickly and dryly responded "we don't retreat, we go forward!" I think of this story every time I hear the word "retreat".

This past weekend I had my socks blessed off by being able to retreat with the women of Maple Ridge Church, where I attended several years when I lived in the cities. The women of this church mean so much to me as they became my family when I couldn't see mine and cared for me well when I wasn't able to go home to get my momma's lovin'. Every spring I look forward to seeing them and spending precious time with them as we travel up past Onamia, following closely the southern portion of Lake Milacs and ending at Timber Bay Retreat Center. The theme for our retreat was L.O.V.E., based on the book by the same title by Drs Les and Leslie Parrot. Our wonderful speaker, Anne, helped us all learn our L.O.V.E type (Leader, Optimist, Validater, and Evaluator) and some of the interesting ins and outs of how to better love each "type". She led us in some fascinating insights into some wonderful Bible stories we had all heard and spun them on their head and brought them to life in new ways. We were able to go on walks through the woods, experience wood tick's together, eat wonderful food, play "minute to win-it" (why oh why did I not have my camera for that one), catch up on one anothers lives, create a plethora of inside jokes, and do all the other retreat type of things people do...come to think of it, I don't believe there were any pranks this year? We all had a blast, new friends were made and I, for one, came home so refreshed!

My wonderful cousin, Anna stayed with Olive and I was a little sad because when Anna left I could see Olive torn between following her and staying with me...They had gone on a bike ride together, which would no doubt be the subject of Olive's Blog if she could write about her exciting weekend :)...I'll watch facebook for photographic evidence of the rest of their weekend...