Two Weeks, Two Milestones, One Grateful Heart

Whew, chile… what an eventful couple of weeks I've had. In the past two weeks, I've experienced two major milestones in my life. The first was the official start of my 3rd year of homeschooling my son. The second was hosting my 4th women's retreat. 

Now you may be wondering, “Ok, so what’s the significance?” To be honest, they both are a testament to my obedience to God (Yahweh). If it had been left up to me, my son would still be in public school, and we'd still be talking about the idea of hosting a women's retreat. Why? Truthfully, I was scared and didn't think I could do either of them.

God had brought it to my attention when my son was in about the 3rd grade that homeschool would be a part of our journey. At the time, I had no clue what homeschool would even look like for us. Less than a year later, we were unexpectedly thrown into remote school due to the rapid spread of COVID-19. You would’ve thought that we would have converted to homeschooling then, but we didn’t. We rode it out for a couple more years until God made it crystal clear that it was time to transition to homeschool. Although it hasn’t always been a walk in the park, it has been a tremendous blessing for me and my son. Don’t worry, I will definitely do a post in the near future to share the full testimony, but for now, I’m just taking a moment to celebrate the start of a new school year.

Now, the Refreshing Women’s retreat has truly been a journey and a faith walk. I remember my biggest question was, “God, I’m not a big marketer and am barely on social media. Not to mention, I’ve never held a retreat or conference before. How am I going to get these women to attend this retreat?” Nevertheless, with the support and encouragement of my business mentor and sister circle, I pressed forward, and God superseded my expectations. We had not just one retreat, but three in less than a year. And every time, I trusted God to send the women that He wanted in the room.

This past weekend, we held our 4th women’s retreat. Although it was amazing, it was different. Unexpectedly, a month before the retreat, God led me to condense the retreat from three days to one. Much like Gideon (Judges 6:36-40), I did a whole lot of checking to make sure I heard God correctly. After much prayer, I surrendered how I thought things would be and shifted to what I heard God say. My obedience made it possible for women to attend who would ordinarily not be able to come for the three-day retreat—women who truly needed this time of refreshing.

My heart is full of gratitude. Now that I’ve gotten through these past couple of weeks, I think it’s time to get some R-E-S-T. If there’s anything I’d like for you to take away from today’s sharing, it would be that there is always work to be done. Even still, it’s ok to stop and enjoy the milestones and accomplishments along the way. And once you’ve celebrated and rested, then you get up and get back to work.