Home From a Retreat at the Beach

This past Friday I gave a bit of a cry-for-help and have been feeling under a lot of pressure lately given my schooling, job, and the recent (beautiful) events in our lives.  So what better time to take a retreat and do nothing?! This past weekend our church has scheduled a retreat at the Oregon coast where the Northwest Yearly Meeting Quakers own a lovely piece of property next to the beach. While December isn’t necessarily the first month that would jump in my mind as the time to visit the beach, it was lovely nonetheless. I waffled on going but I had a few motivating factors, first, it would be a great time to get to know people in our church, second, the weekend was really meant to be a retreat no over-planning and scheduling, and third, I was going to take L with me so it would be our first weekend adventure together. I decided the space away from school might be good for my head and help me get some perspective on the whole thing, so I promised myself to think little about it, and do no coursework while away.

I’m really glad I got to take a break and get away with L and friends from the Church. It was really lovely. We had a great group show up, lots of kids, some new faces, and plenty of people in our church I’ve been wanting to get to know more and just haven’t had the chance. Plus the weather was amazing! L and I had a great time hanging out, playing and sharing a big room all to ourselves. She even slept in a “big girl bed” all by herself!

So, tomorrow I will start back at my final paper for this quarter and hope that the distance helped to clear some things up, I feel I have less panic than I did a few days ago and I trust it will all come together and that God is with me in this much more than I felt on Friday.

The worship we did was really fun as well. On Saturday morning we read and discussed together some writings/a poem/ and queries I pulled together for the weekend (If you’re interested in downloading the packet go to the church’s website here). And Sunday we sand Christmas carols, prayed for one another, read the Scripture texts for the second week of advent and had open worship. It was all very nice. And I look forward to it again next December!