On Faith (Part 1)

This weekend I went to a Living Proof Live event. Beth Moore is the speaker at these events. In my opinion, LPL is the best event available for women who want a Word from the Lord without all the hype and infomercials that other events of it's nature come with. Beth Moore is a dynamic speaker and I have found more often than not that we set off in a direction and you think you know what's going down and then out-of-the-blue the holy spirit launches a sneak attack. That is exactly what happened to me on Saturday.

Last year we went to an event in Baltimore, MD. I was the trip planner and several things happened that tilted my slight OCD brain. Unfortunately, I didn't hear a word she said all weekend. The enemy successfully hijacked my thoughts and had me mentally careening back and forth between anger and feelings of complete inadequacy. I was the trip planner again this year and made a pretty rock solid itinerary that warded off any of the bobbles that happened last year. Moreover, I traveled this year looking for a Word from the Lord and was dedicated to not becoming side tracked. I'm pleased to report a successful mission.

As I write this post I am not completely convinced that I will publish it. I do, however, need desperately to try and organize my thoughts about the things that happened and what I heard over the weekend.

First of all, 11 women went on this trip from our church of  less than 300. I don't really know how many members our church has. Typical adult attendance on Sunday is somewhere just south of 200 on a  really good day. I found that spectacular. There would have been several more but there was another fun thing on the same weekend and unfortunately you can't be in two places at once. I don't know that in the 10 year history of the church there has been a women's trip so well attended. So Yay!

The event date we chose was a one day only event. We decided to make 2 days of it because there was a several hour drive to get to the venue. So we set out on friday morning armed with an air-tight itinerary. Our first stop was a couple hours out at a mall for lunch. I include this is my recalling of the story because it's the first place something wonderful happened.  We gathered food from our preferred establishments then rendezvoused in the middle of the food court to dine together. Interestingly enough, I chose a food court because I wanted to please as many as I could and figured everyone could go their own way, eat together, not eat together, or whatever. I chose the path of least resistance. What happened was magical. We all sat together to eat and chat. That in itself wasn't really magical but what it led to was. The conversation twisted and turned a bit but ended with us laughing really hard such that attention was drawn from all over the food court. We were even approached by a sweet older woman who teasingly told us to keep it down. I felt like that conversation really set us off on the journey together. The funny knit us together from the beginning and I felt like that was really important because we were a somewhat diverse group and a group that doesn't generally hang out together. I won't describe the rest of that day but it was spectacular and filled with several more golden bonding moments.

I've decided now to split this into more than one post. I'm feeling wordy and feel like I need to break it down. And, I've decided to post my experience and hope not to bore you to death. (All 2 of you who read this)