I went to a Christian Women's retreat awhile back. It was pretty awesome. I'd been to a few teen retreats and the national Youth Rally, but I'd always found them boring and dumb. Love Jesus, hate the machine, amiright, man? Society doesn't control me!
Um...anyway...
This one wasn't like that (possibly because my views on "society, man" have matured, but more likely because this thing was far less structured). It was, in fact, pretty awesome, as previously stated. We showed up on Friday night, had a little opening service, then had dinner and played games (me, Mom, Aunty, and a friend from church played Taboo [which is the best game, if you're not playing with my fiancee, who always wins, no matter who he's paired with - we once rotated him all night so that he was partnered with each person, and whichever team he was on always won, even when he was paired with the girl who said Harry Potter was a bad series of books, but Twilight was good and so was clearly stupid (yay parenthesis)]). On Saturday, we had a whole day of Bible studies. Sunday, there was a closing service and we all went home. It was kind of whirl-wind, with only about an hour on Saturday set aside for "quiet time."
What was really cool was that it was all put on by my mom's church, so most of the ladies there were from the same place, the group was pretty small, and each study was led by one of the ladies. Each one picked a different topic to cover and covered it in their own way. It wasn't too structured then, we were all sort of feeling our way through it, and I feel like I learned a ton. It was very enriching (and I now feel like I know what that word even means).
The theme was blessings, and more specifically, blessings in suffering. The question came up again and again - do you want happiness or joy? What's the difference?
