Rejuvenation

I know I haven't posted in a while.  The last two weeks have been rough.  I could go through all the details, but that would be boring and uninspiring, so I'm going to paraphrase and then focus on the turning point in the last two weeks. 

One major blow was not getting a passing score for my National Board certification.  I was pretty devastated and dejected.  It is not the end of the world, I realize now, and I will try again this coming year.  Another crusher was report cards coming out and a parent really taking it out on me.  Several parents had questions because these were new report cards for them and it was confusing to see 2's instead of 4's for their *perfect* children.  But 1 parent got personal with it all and took it out on me in a nasty kind of way.  After receiving bad news from National Boards, this pushed me over the edge a bit.

The turning point was this past weekend when Matt and I went on a retreat with the 20s/30s groups from church.  It was a weekend getaway to Cornwall-On-Hudson, about an hour and a half north of the city.  We stayed at a United Methodist camp in one of the manor houses.  This was not "roughing it" kind of camping.  The manor house had tons of rooms, nicely decorated, and lots of land behind it to sprawl out.  The weekend was all about Finding the Wellspring - determining our gifts at this point in our lives and identifying the things that were holding us back from being our best selves.  This was just the kind of stopping-and-reflecting that I needed.  It was divine intervention, I believe.  I took a lot of time to just be quiet and still.  I shut off my phone for the whole weekend (it was liberating!) and prayed a lot.  I won't go into a lot of details, but suffice it to say that I found the kind of peace I was searching for and a lot of the burdens I'd been carrying were lifted.

Besides the intense spiritual work we did, there was a lot of socializing and fellowship.  We made a lot of new, great friends.  We ate a LOT, played games, went on a beautiful hike, sang and slept.  I told the group that when I signed up for this retreat a few months ago, it was mostly because I wanted to make more friends.  But, as the weeks went on and things were challenging for me, I realized that this retreat held much more significance than just making friends.  I gained some insight to myself and a deeper connection with God.  So, it was a fantastic weekend and I'm really glad we went.

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Tonight we had friends, Alex and Rachel Lopez, come to visit just for the evening.  We knew them from our church in Raleigh, but hadn't seen them in years, since their wedding.  They live in Houston and we loved catching up with them, sharing some wonderful pizza at a new place, and making plans to see each other sooner rather than later.  We hope they will come back and visit soon!

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This week brings lots of excitement.  Matt's parents are coming up as I type this now on the bus from Winston-Salem.  I'm impressed that they are enduring the long ride with who knows what kinds of people.  They're coming for Thanksgiving and we have lots of plans...I won't spoil all of them now, so you'll have to check back in on Sunday to find out what all we do!  Have a blessed and joyous Thanksgiving everyone!!!