Ethereal Queen

NYC Trip

I drove in last night from my trip to NYC. I have to say it was great to be home, but the drive alone really exhausted me, especially because I had the same stomach flu that my NYC friends had. Made the drive challenging, to say the least!

The seminar at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC on Saturday, 7/7/07, was great. There were almost 50 people there. I could see the "ah ha" moments throughout the day. Even though the teaching pace is very fast, the seminar always seems to be a door opener to help abuse survivors jump-start their recovery process. The Diaconate (who sponsor the seminar) did a great job of putting this together. This is an annual event that they hostand I think it was my fifth year of presenting this.

I taught two retreats for Brooklyn Teen Challenge last week after the seminar. The first was for men and the second was for women. The men's retreat was quite challenging because so many of the participants arrive with iron and stone walls up, thinking this had nothing to do with them. Of course, the retreat process dissolves those walls of hurt and fear, and by the end I saw real life changes taking place. One young man actually apologized to me for being so unreceptive the first day. Another man who spent twenty years in prison saw the application of the tools I teach as a way to move beyond the scars he carried with him from prison - not just his childhood. We actually ran over our scheduled time because they asked so many questions and saw the very real applications of what I taught to their addiction recovery too.

The women's retreat was equally amazing. Several of the women had been to the retreat from the previous year and heard the information in a different way. This happens because they are at a different place in their lives, but they came to new places of experiencing God and received new layers of healing. That's the thing about abuse recovery, it is one step at a time, layers exposed and healed, then new layers and new strength occurs. One woman who had already been through the retreat finally used her voice in such an honest way that she clearly saw for the first time how deeply injured she was by the bitterness she carried. The depth of pain was almost breathtaking at the beginning of the retreat. The depth of healing was completely breathtaking at the end.

In between all of these seminars and retreats, we threw a surprise birthday party for our worship leader, Cindy. She flew in from Colorado to be with us. We had great fun as her NYC friends gathered to share a meal with her, let her know how special she is to us, and then we topped it all off by hiring a singing telegram "Birthday Fairy" to publicly let the world know about her birthday. As I surveyed all of us who gathered to celebrate this precious friend, I realized every one of us had experienced devastating abuse and suffering, and yet here we were, laughing, enjoying life, free to honor each other. It was a beautiful thing and a true testimony to the grace of Christ in our lives and in our journeys.
www.committedtofreedom.org

posted by Sallie @ 6:48 AM