Perpetual Expressions

I had published a post titled “Small Hands, Big Punches” in the past 24 hours. Due to the personal and sensitive nature of the article and some negative comments, I have removed the post at this time. I felt that the discussion could be harmful to certain persons, therefore, I made the editorial decision to make the post and the resulting comments private for now. I thank everyone for their support and understanding in this difficult situation. If you left a comment, I appreciate your readership and your addition to this blog and apologize for the unexpected removal of information.

God bless.

*waves from the depths*

Yes, I am here. I have felt your prayers and concerns for my continued absence. I admit, it has been hard to get back into the blogging habit. Unfortunately, life has been complicated lately, too!! I know, I know! Life is ALWAYS complicated. LOL But it does seem to have called for double exclamation points recently. So, we interrupt the regularly vacant appeal of this blog for a brief splash of life.

For those who have been wondering about my brilliant in-church retreat idea… it actually went well. In spite of me. LOL Those who participated enjoyed themselves immensely, were touched by the Spirit, and were overjoyed to be given a chance for real fellowship and discussion. I’m not sure I realized how important that truly was beforehand. Of course, beforehand was a chaotic blur of complete and total panic for me, but the result was well worth it. I’ll be ready to attempt it again in about 10 years…though voices were heard commenting that it should be an annual event. Very surprising, intriguing, and inspirational thoughts came out of the event, and I think God did something truly extraordinary here.

And then I dropped the ball. The idea was for the retreat to NOT be an event, but the beginning of a religious lifestyle change for our church. I never planned beyond the retreat. Which has me in another whirl of chaos as I try to organize thoughts, meetings, and activities before the effect of the retreat wears off the congregation. It would be very easy to have them slip back into the old way of thinking where they could look back on the weekend fondly and sigh about how much they enjoyed it. But the thinking, the devotion, the prayers that occurred at the retreat should become a way of life for a church, not another photo to put on a church history page. I’m not sure how to accomplish that right now, but I’m hoping God will spin me in the right direction and I’ll stick.

So many things have taken place over the past couple of weeks that I honestly feel overwhelmed. I will try to post on some of them over the next few days just so everyone can witness how flawed I truly am. I think that’s necessary now. I’ve been trying to keep it all together and not let everyone see that I’m a mess, and it has affected me greatly. I ask for your continued patience and prayers.

We return you now to your regularly scheduled blogosphere already in progress.

I know, I have faded into the woodworkings of my blog. I know there are some who come and check on me regularly to see if I’ve come out of my shell yet, so I felt the need to pop in and type “hi”.

Hi!

I will probably be an absentee blogger for a bit longer and I ask for your patience. You see when I feel like I’m don’t have enough on my plate, I like to turn the plate over and start filling up the backside. So, now I’m standing here ankle-deep in food and staring at the bottom of my plate. In other words…

I didn’t feel like I had enough to occupy my time, so I came up with the idea to host an in-church retreat for our congregation. A time to renew our connection to each other and to God and refocus on the vision He has for us as a church. It will require lots of writing, decorating, directing, and hair-pulling. The retreat is set for Sept. 8th so you probably will not see me much between now and then.

However, I must share my excitement, too. I have the wonderful opportunity to attend a contemporary Christian concert this Friday, Aug 31st and I am VERY excited. I’m going with a group from church and I’m looking forward to being renewed and blessed by what God displays to us. I will probably stop by and share any thoughts I have from the concerts with you next weekend.

Until then, may God bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you. Amen.