Stream of Consciousness

You'll have to excuse me if things are misspelled and "stream of consciousness."  I'm just recovering from an overnight retreat.  Man, have I been tired today!  I borrowed an air mattress from a very generous gal, but it happened to be one of those double stacker kind, that's sort of like 2 mattresses on top of each other.  Well, I guess I didn't blow it up enough, because I was sort of sandwiched in the middle - picture the meat in a taco, that was me.  The sweet woman who hosted all of us, just moved in to this beautiful house a couple of weeks ago.  It was gorgeous!  I was just thinking back to when we first moved into our house.  We had to kick out the previous tenants, which were black widow spiders!  I know if you've read my previous earwig posts you must think we live in the jungle, but nope, it's just Orlando.  So, I'm thinking that, of course, if she just moved in those little guys are in her house too.  I just knew they were going to seek me out . . . and bite me.  And they'd find me dead in the morning.  This kept me awake for a while, but obviously, I survived.

The time was well spent.  The retreat was for those of us who will be leading Bible studies in the women's ministry this year. We talked about perfectionism and the parable of the talents.  Lots of women especially young moms hide their "talents" because they're afraid they won't be able to serve well.  It was a good reminder to invest the time I do have. 

We also covered humility. She gave examples of selfish ambition: people pleasing, caring deeply about what people think, always defensive when criticized, desire to be noticed, sensitive, insecure.  I wanted to say "get out of my head, lady!"  It was good stuff, but hard to hear.

The job of the retreat was to prepare us more to lead Bible studies and disciple women in the coming weeks.  I'm so looking forward to it.  I get to co-lead with a really neat girl.  We'll have about 5 others in our group to invest our time in.  I'm excited to see what the Lord will do through it.  

Little Guy and I had a special afternoon before I left buying school supplies.  I'm not sure why I thought that shopping for pencils and paper would be special for a 5 year old . . . The toys kept luring him over.  I did keep him with me for a cinnamon sugar pretzel though.

I forgot to add some pics from Colorado that we just got from a friend - sweet girl at the petting zoo.  I told you this post might be "stream of consciousness," but I did want to share these because she loved the animals so much . . .

Please excuse the ice cream, icee, cookie, and hot dog on her face.

I do think this is right before a goat peed on my leg . . . literally.