Retreat Update!

I am back from my retreat with my Mom. We had a great time! I believe
God really helped me. Mom gave me a special necklace to remind me of
a promise. The necklace is a cross that is really elegant and can be turned
either way and will still look great! It's a reversible necklace I guess! It
says, "A journey of faith is a journey of love." I really believe that some
lies that I have believed for so long have finally been broken. We took
the lies that I have been believing in my head and heart and literally
burned them in a can (we thought it would be very memorable if we set
off the fire alarms in the whole hotel and our excuse and the truth we would
tell them was that "we were burning lies and fears!" We laughed at the
thought! It was quite humorous to think about! lol) Then we replaced the
lies with truths out of the Bible. The lies we were focusing on were lies that
I have had for so long that I didn't even realize I had. We focused on the
lies that were built up from my past hurts. Most of which were along the lines
of marriage life. I really feel free to not be afraid. It will still be a little tough
at times, but once the roots have been pulled, the plant can grow into
something beautiful. That means, once the fears and lies have been uprooted
out of my life, I can grow into something beautiful-the person God has
called me to be! I can be the wife that I am supposed to be someday to
my future husband! I know that people always say that I talk and think about
"marriage" a lot. There has been things that I have had trouble dealing with
regarding this subject though. Once I can overcome that, I can believe the
truth and think about marriage more positively! Which will help many
relationships in my life! :)

We did some fun things too! We went to downtown St. Louis and stayed
in a very nice hotel. We then went that evening to the Spaghetti Factory,
that was a fun place! It has a train inside of it! Then the next day
we went shopping at Kohls with a gift card that some wonderful people
gave me! We spent 2 hours there because we were trying to find the
best things for the best price! Oh I was SO stressed! I was getting so
emotional because everything was wrong! I couldn't decide what outfits
I wanted to buy, then when I sort of decided, we went to check out and
I saw a tear in one of the shirts, then we were going to change it out, then
when we decided to do that, we noticed they just changed the signs from
50% off to 35% off! We were NOT happy after spending that much time
shopping expecting that result! Then, when we fixed that and found
something else to buy, I thought I lost my gift card! I was almost in tears
by now! I might of been acutally! Then we put up the stuff we spent so
long picking out and went to the car and searched everything. THEN....
Mom saved the day and found the gift card and then we lost another
gift card I had that only had $7 left on it! We were able to get the outfits
though! That was a day I will never forget! I was finally relieved!


After all of the mess at Kohls, we went to the big Goodwill and shopped
and I was able to get a few more things-a dress, a skirt and a shirt! :)
I was happy! The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly except that Mom
was scatterbrained the first day a lot and I was scatterbrained the second
day a lot! I think it was because we were a little stressed about the talk or
nervous, or something! We had a good time though!