God’s Love is All I Need
Last weekend at our women’s retreat we heard from our beloved Beth Moore on the subject of "Loving Well". She of course said it much more eloquently, and in much more detail, but the bottom line of our weekend was that we need to live, and love, out of the overflow of God’s love for us.
God is love. He loves us completely and unconditionally and we need to accept, and truly dwell in that love before we will be able to love others. Loving others is the second greatest commandment and really a measure of our spiritual maturity. (Mark 12:28-31)
Some probably have a really hard time just accepting the fact that God loves us unconditionally but I think I have a pretty good grasp on that.
But what does it mean to let God’s love "fill me up"? Because, really, if I let his love fill me then it should be enough for me. Love from my husband, my kids, my friends – that would all be icing on the cake, not a necessity.
So, since my "love language" is acts of service I was thinking about how God loves me through acts of service.
What came to mind first is the biggest act of service – he sacrificed his son to die on the cross so that I would not have to pay the price for my sins. I do not know of a greater way that God has shown his love.
While I can’t pinpoint tangible acts of service (like doing the laundry and the dishes) I know that God loves me in this way. How? Because Jesus, his son, chose to love by serving others.
1. Attending a wedding and realizing the bride and groom were out of wine, he chose to perform his first miracle and turned water into wine…really good wine. (John 2:1-11)
2. He healed many, even raised some from the dead.
3. He calmed the storm when the disciples were fearful for their lives. (Matthew 8:23-27)
4. He washed the feet of the disciples. (Ew, gross – that takes a true servant’s heart.) (John 13:1-17)
5. Jesus prayed for us. (John 17)
6. He takes away my fear and anxiety. (Phil 4:6)
There are so many more but this gives me a start. So what’s your love language? (Acts of service, words of affirmation, gifts, physical touch, quality time?) Think about it and then think about how God speaks to you in your love language. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Retreat Lowdown
I’m still digesting everything we learned on the retreat but I thought I would post a little "review" or run down for anyone who may be involved in doing any sort of women’s retreat at their church.
About a week before Karina and I met and I somehow volunteered myself to head up this thing, I had received a brochure from Lifeway Publications that featured some of Beth Moore’s materials, including the "Loving Well Retreat in a Box". I’m not even sure how they got my name but I think God put me on their mailing list.
As this was the first women’s retreat ever for our church we REALLY wanted it to be quality! Rather than trying to find a great speaker, plus the additional cost we really decided that the Beth box was the way to go. I mean, it’s Beth Moore. You know it’s going to be spectacular! For $100 we got the DVD set, Leader Guide, some promotional helps (which really I ended up designing our own), and a sample journal. Outstanding price!
We kept the retreat in town, but on the other side of town in Scottsdale (about 45 min drive) at the Gainey Suites Hotel. It was the PERFECT place. The hotel is small but extremely cozy and upscale looking. They had a free continental breakfast everyday which helped us keep the costs down for the ladies. The rooms were awesome and the staff was spectacular. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to hold a small even (up to about 150 people).
I’m not going to post our entire schedule (but if you really want it you can e-mail me). We had a session on Thursday evening, another session Friday morning, then the ladies had the afternoon to shop or go to the spa, etc. A great dinner together on Friday evening, followed by another session (last of the Beth Moore video portion). Saturday morning after breakfast we met for worship time and an open sharing time. Boy did the tears flow! (Kleenex at each table? Check!)
Each session time had games, door prizes, worship, prayer, the video and then small group discussion time which the ladies did at their round tables of 9 or 10.
I cannot say enough good things about the Loving Well Retreat in a Box. If you know Beth Moore, you know she’s a spectacular speaker. The video portions were from an event she did in Knoxville almost 2 years ago. But you didn’t feel like you missed portions of her talk at all. You still got the funny stories, and the meat of the message. (More on that in another post.)
We did two extra things that were pretty fun. First, we laid out a "Creative Love Challenge" where we just challenged the ladies to find a creative way to show love to another woman there during the retreat. Some bought little treats, some even did a birthday cake for one of the girls. Our hotel room door got decorated (twice), etc.
The second was our "Love Notes". We bought 6×9 white envelopes – one for each lady – and wrote their name on it. We attached these to the hotel wall (with sticky putty so as not to damage the wall), back side facing out, flap up. Then we made cute little postcards with a design on one side, blank on the bank and encouraged the ladies to write Love Notes to the other women – friends, roommates, ladies in their group, etc. We printed enough for each lady to do about 10 Love Notes. Well we ran out by Friday afternoon and had to resort to using the hotel notepads. How awesome is that! The ladies were really getting into the loving! So at the end of retreat on Saturday each lady got to take their envelope home and read their love notes.
I’ve reread mine several times since they. They are such an encouragement and a nice little treat to my day. Made me realize how much a written note can brighten someone’s day. I’m going to try and make it a practice to write 1-2 little handwritten notes each week to someone. Gotta pass on the love!
I had an awesome team of ladies helping with the retreat – Karina, Jen, Violet, Laura – I couldn’t have done it without them, as well as the ladies who stepped up to be greeters, small group leaders and prayer team members. God’s hand was definitely on the whole weekend and I can’t wait to do the next one!
What started out as a joke about being a Beth Moore groupie turned into custom made tank tops – iron on transfers and some puffy paint. We had a blast – going to send Beth a picture of her groupies (Brooke, Karina, Me and Jen) (It’s kind of hard to read – they say "Beth Moore groupie" and she’s even got a puffy paint tiara on 🙂
Well Loved
Well I am worn out, but well loved! Our "Loving Well" retreat went awesome! We had a great time – the ladies were so fun. We laughed, we cried and we learned a lot from Beth Moore and from each other.
I have so many thoughts swirling in my head that it will take some time to digest them and get something coherent to post about but I wanted to thank everyone for their prayers. There was nary a problem with the retreat. God’s hands were truly all over this weekend.
Explaining to Grandma
I was looking for some quotes for a craft I was making and I came across this proverb.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
I had to laugh.
First, you have to understand my grandmother. Grandma Edith was what I would consider a "prim and proper" grandma. She grew up on the East Coast, was an English teacher and was just, well, proper. She had her view on things and that’s just the way it was. There wasn’t much you could do to convince her she was wrong or that there might be another side to the story. (She once tried to tell me that I, at 16, was too young to know what love was. To which I replied, "You’re right Grandma, I guess I don’t love you. I’m too young to know what love is." (I CANNOT believe my dad didn’t ground me for that.) She was, BTW, talking about me and a boy.
So fast forward to about 1997. She was about 93 at the time and I was driving her home after a family event. It was just the two of us in the car. We talked some but then it had fallen quiet as we rode.
Out of the blue she asks, "What do they mean when they say ‘french-kissing’?"
I think I coughed and sputtered for a few seconds, trying to get over the shock of the phrase "french-kissing" coming out of my grandmother’s mouth.
How best to explain it somewhat delicately so as not to offend prim and proper Grandma?
I think I ended up saying something like "Well, it’s when two people are kissing and they touch tongues." And I left it at that, quietly pleading for her not to ask for more details.
"Oh," she said.
And it was quiet the rest of the way to her house.
Twas the Night Before Retreat
And I am too brain dead to write something even remotely like a poem 🙂
Instead, I will say that I am super excited, and a little nervous, about this weekend. We’ve been planning like crazy for the last two months for our church’s first-ever Women’s Retreat. God has been ever-present in helping me find a great team of coordinators, leading us to Beth Moore’s "Loving Well" retreat program, and filling our spots. Details have come into line and tomorrow is the big day. There is some setup to do of the room, but really it feels like it should be smooth sailing.
Last week 4 of us were meeting and got to talking about a certain portion of the retreat that we feel like God is really going to use in a big way and well simultaneously got goose bumps! It was so weird.
We’re going to be learning how to love others, including the very first step in realizing how much God loves us. A few nights ago I started reading "A Love Worth Giving" by Max Lucado – there is some good stuff in there. Lots of stuff I want to blog about when I have more time to absorb it.
In the meantime, if you’re hear and reading I thought I would offer up ways you can pray for this weekend:
- Pray for the 71 ladies that are attending – that nothing will prevent them from being there in body and in spirit. That their minds will be open to learning from God’s word and that the Holy Spirit will work in their lives and their relationships.
- For the retreat leadership team – that the details will be taken care of so that we can focus on the ladies who are attending, and loving on them. That we will hear the Holy Spirit guiding us if there is someone in particular that needs to be loved on, prayed for, etc.
- For the prayer team – that those who are hurting will seek them out and that the Holy Spirit will lead them as they pray with the women.
Happy Birthday Honey!
Hubby is turning the big 3-5 today! Happy Birthday sweetheart. We met some 19 years ago and fell in love about a year after that (after I broke up with that other guy). I’m sure I could dig up some really funny picture of him from his younger days – like the one in his wrestling uniform (my mom calls it his "romper"). Or the one where he had a mullet during the mandatory "grow your hair out in rebellion your freshman year of college" phase.
There are many sides to my dear sweet husband. He has what I call his "military mode" – this is his serious, all-business face that he puts on during long-ago military functions, while teaching a class, or leading a meeting. It’s his work-mode. At the church office they nicknamed him "The Machine" because he’s efficient and he gets stuff done and he can be ALL BUSINESS.
But he has a super silly side that not everyone gets to see. This is the Mark that gives me a "goose" as we’re walking through the parking lot to the restaurant. The man who doesn’t mind stopping to ask for directions…
from a wax WWII soldier 🙂
He is super-competitive and has been known to bend make up rules to his advantage. (In all fairness this is taught to all Gumm men by their forefathers.) He will get out the ruler (or his hand if one is not handy) to figure out who’s ball came closer.
He is an awesome dad. He loves our kids and is passing on a Godly heritage that he learned from those aforementioned forefathers. He will wrestle them, throw them in the air (no matter how much it hurts his shoulder)
…
He even makes Mickey Mouse pancakes.
He gives me nights out with Stacey and even week-long trips to visit Kristen. And then writes really sweet posts like this or this, while I’m gone.
And his heart…I’m not sure how to put into words the heart of my husband, and for that matter the heart of his father and his grandfather. They would literally give you the shirt off their back. We tease my father-in-law about being a big crier – he’ll get choked up telling a story or just thinking about someone. The other day he was sorting through some papers and found my Baccalaureate program from 1991. He was reading the list of names (just the names) and he got all teary-eyed. That same heart is in my dear hubby. He truly has a heart for hurting people. He will give away all the money in his pocket to a family in need. He will pray with someone who is hurting, cry with them, laugh with them.
So Happy Birthday sweetheart (and Happy Father’s Day). We are blessed to have you.
The Why of Blogging
Chilihead is hosting a Blogging Carnival on why you blog so I thought I’d join in.
How did you start blogging? Mostly it was because our pastor, and hubby’s boss, wanted to start a blog and I was the web person so it was my job to figure out what software to use, etc. I figured that hands-on research was best so I started a blogger account. It was July 2005. There was also the fact that I was bored. We were in the middle of moving and living out of suitcases, shuffling between my parents house, friend’s house, back to parents house, etc. We had 3 weeks before our new house was ready. So I had time on my hands.
Did you intend
to be a blog w/a big following? If so, how did you go about it? I didn’t and I don’t have one. For awhile I was a little obsessed with my traffic but then I realized that was a little ridiculous.
What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog?
Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those
goals? My main purpose in starting the blog was just to keep up with friends and family on what we were doing. I have several out-of-state friends, family in CA, AR, CO and of course, England. It’s an easy way for them to catch up. The second goal was just to get writing again. I love to write and haven’t done much of it in the last few years. I’m not sure that I’ve done much "in-depth" writing here that I would consider a good use of my skills, but at least it’s something.
Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How? It’s still just mostly about our daily life. I think through the different blogs I read I’ve started to include a variety of things in my blog. It’s funny that as I go through my day I’ll think "Now, that would make a good blog post." Of course, rarely do I remember that later when I’m staring at a blank post box.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started? How addicting it would become.
Do you
make money with your blog? No, I don’t try.
Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why? Yes. My MIL and SIL are faithful readers. My parents read periodically (and then have to catch up). One brother reads it sporadically. I’m not sure if Brad does or not. I’m not sure about extended family (if they do they never comment).
What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger? Just do it. Post semi-regularly so people will keep coming back. Comment on other blogs you like to introduce yourself.
If you write your own blogging story, head to Chilihead’s and add yourself to her Mr. Linky.
Is he cute or what?
Isn’t this just the most adorable baby you have seen in awhile? I got to go cuddle him in the hospital yesterday. You always forget how small they really are. He snuggled into my chest with his long legs scrunched up, all frog like, and settled in for a sleep with his hair gently tickling under my chin. I was tempted to make a run for it with him but I think Stacey would have ran me down.
Jacob Austin
June 5th at 1:23pm
7 lbs 13oz
Isn’t it kind of her to keep having babies so I can get my baby fix?
Could the end be almost here?
Today I heard the most wonderful phrase in the world from my orthodontist…
"Next time we’ll see how that tooth is and then we’ll talk about getting them off."
I would have jumped out of my chair and hugged him but he had a big dental pick in my mouth and I would have hit my head on the giant light that was shining in my eye.
I got to go off my Rubber-Band-Diet and just have to use a small band on each side to keep my now-perfect bite in alignment.
They reset one bracket today to move one of my front teeth slightly. When that is in the right spot I AM DONE! So I get rechecked on the 27th and depending on my progress maybe I’ll get a removal date.
We talked retainers a bit. Apparently they now use permanent retainers on top and bottom that sit behind your teeth (no ruining that pretty new smile). That should help with my lack of self-discipline and should save hubby from having to nag me about wearing them. Then I guess there is a clear plastic retainer that is worn on the top only – all the time for first few months, then only at night.
Very exciting stuff!
One Mom's Lifesong 