Perpetual Expressions

*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.