To Feel Again...

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a retreat with my church’s “College and Career Age Group”. It was such a blast. Here is a recap of the weekend:

On Friday night we arrived, unloaded the cars and claimed beds/floor space. The house was freezing cold as it was heated by the wood burning fireplace (more to come on the coldness later). All 26 of us sat down in the living room and sang some worship songs and had a quick talk.

That evening, we all went to bed around midnight. We soon discovered that the house was not heating up fast enough, so we slept in about 15 degree weather! It was honestly the coldest I have ever been in my life. Most of us ended up not sleeping and just huddled around the fireplace. It was humorous after the fact.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast around 8:30 and just chilled for the next few hours. In the mid morning we had another meeting. We had a group discussion on our biggest satisfactions in the Church today, and our biggest disappointments. It was really interesting to hear everyone’s point of view. The general ending of the discussion seemed to conclude that we, as believers, need to get back to our first love and start really developing our personal relationships with God instead of just going through the motions.

That afternoon, we all hung out playing board games and acting overtly gay (haha). It was so stellar to just have nothing important to do. For the record, I completely wiped Hoshi out in poker!..haha. I would say this afternoon was the best time of bonding for the group as a whole. It seemed like everyone was really enjoying themselves.

That evening, we had our final service, which consisted mainly of just worship. Delmar spoke for about 30 minutes, but the other hour and half was simply time with God. It was a powerful evening, and I will recap what happened to me spiritually a little bit later.

The cabin was much warmer that evening, and the three Josh`s (Me, Hosh and Josh Brown) all slept in a twin bed. I must say that despite being spooned by Hosh all evening, I slept like a log.

On Sunday morning, the triple J (the 3 Josh`s!) slept in. When we got up, everyone was pretty much ready to hit the road, so we packed our stuff, threw the football around a bit, and left.

Like I said earlier, this was a really refreshing weekend for me. I have been dealing with a ton of conflict in my life lately. I really feel like God was beckoning me to come back to my first love in him. I would say the thing I am most excited about, is the fact that I am starting to feel again spiritually. I feel like I have been ignoring that side of my life for so long. I would love to say that I started balling my eyes out, and God knocked me on my face, but that is not how it happened. I feel like my road back to wholeness won’t be an instant one, however, after feeling that glimpse of him this past weekend, I am ready for the work. I am ready for a lifestyle change. I want to start looking through God’s eyes. Everything seems so much more beautiful when seen through holiness.

Anyway, I am glad you are all around me to witness the change in my life, and hold me accountable to it. I am ready for the next step, and I think God has a plan for me (and you!).

Here are some photos from the weekend:

About to play monopoly!

Me, Tracy, and Jami

The celebratory dogpile after our board game victory.

Hosh looking like an 8 year old:

Wood burning stoves!

Rach and Wendy just chillin!