*Walks in slowly and lies down* Hi Mr. Blog, I feel a little tired today. Worn out by life.
Now this story is the longest I've told you, so please lie down. *Waits for him*
When I was a kid, church was a popular and common activity for most people.
Went back to when we were more rural and they did not TVs and stuff to entertain people.
So when my grandma, my mom's mom, Lois Allen Williams Ringstrom moved to Seattle from Virginia City Montanta, she lived in the North End of Seattle by Ravenna Park and joined the Univeristy Christian Church around 1920. She loved God and was a national secretary for the Church Women United group. My mom was born and raised in that church and so was I. But as a teen, I lost interest and quit going but my mom was one of the youth group leaders.
So last Friday, after my DECA deal, I drag-raced up I-405, which for me is going the speed limit. I drive so slow all the time that the kids in their thirties honk at me.
I unpacked and repacked and looked at my pile of stuff unsorted from Port Angeles. The timing was bad for me to go out of town but God told me to go so I did.
Now, I'm the last person I would expect to believe in God regardless of being raised to.
Five years of college turned me into the biggest skeptic you ever did see Mr. Blog.
As Brenny always says, "It's an inside job."
So the sun came out and I drove up church mountain and unloaded my gear by my van.
I was just getting ready to peel my orange when Lynn Pearson showed up.
I went to junior high with a Lynn Pearson but it wasn't the same woman.
She had a fancy Volvo SUV which was really exciting to ride in and she was a nice lady.
Warm and friendly and really young, like thirty or forty and trim with the shiniest brown hair I ever saw and intelligent-looking brown eyes. Well Mr. Blog, she didn't just look intelligent, she was! She has a cool job working in the Finn Hill middle school library and after we enjoyed a quick ride to Edmonds listening to my favorite pop-music, we missed the boat!
Hahaha. I was so glad because I had been hard-pressed to find Teddy 7th grade books and was fresh out of ideas of what would interest him.
Well, Lynn was a well of teenager reading materials and I just fell in and happily drown with all her suggestions. I had my trusty PA from Rite Aid and filled up four pages of books she suggested and was happy as a clam.
We got on the 5:10PM ferry and went upstairs to look at the view. She picked the right place to sit because it was about the most awesome view of Edmonds, the trains, and Mount Baker and the Cascade Mountains you ever did see! I've seen it a million times but never at sunset because we go that way in the morning on our way out to the ocean.
Lynn was a perfect carpool partner for me. I was still tired from my Port Angeles trip going into my auntie/DECA gig, and she didn't mind quiet and listening to music. Plus she was the best woman driver I had ever ridden with. Okay, I shouldn't compare her to Brenny, who adds clumps of gray hair to my head every single time I get in her car!
So I start getting hungry and ask Lynn if she thinks we'll make it for dinner. She told me she thought we would and I told her if we didn't I didn't mind getting a burger in Indianola. Well, I didn't know why she chuckled at that until we rolled into Indianola as it got dark.
Indianola is even smaller than Rolling Bay. All there was was a tiny store and a few houses!
She carefully crept through the road to Indianola which looked like someone paved a deer trail and it was pitch black when we got to the chow house.
She insisted on dropping me off right there which gave me a panic attack. I knew very few of the people I knew from my 10:30 service would be there and I don't know hardly anyone from the two earlier services.
So, I just bucked up and walked in and our pastor, Lara, waved at me.
Well, if God didn't make Lara in his image, I'll be a monkey's uncle.
There were two dozen women there and I found the only open seat at a table of people I had never met before except one. I recognized Pam Chick. She is the warm, friendly lady that encouraged me to go a few weeks ago. She told me twice that morning, "You should really come!" Well, I'm chicken with strangers but that second little push made me take the leap of faith.
Hahahaha. Leap of Faith, get it Mr. Blog? Going to my first church women's retreat?
*Looks over and sees he is already fast asleep and snoring softly*
So I was warming greeted by everyone and thank God they had on name-tags but they introduced themselves anyway. I had on my church name tag and somehow a matching one on a cord was popped over my head. Well, after ten years as a scout and PTA leader, it was darn relaxing right off the bat to get to be a follower! And the ginger chicken and brown rice and stuff was totally to die for. All the food was tasty and healthy, like someone could follow recipes or something. I could have lost weight if I wasn't such a pig for good food!
So we had a nice dinner but I made the mistake of getting a huge green salad.
I'm far too lazy to make salad at home and in the back of my mind I was nagged about taking that big of a salad. Sure enough, the world's slowest eater, comes in half-way through a dinner of people that are ready for more fun. Ugh. I chewed like a crazy-woman because even though I insisted they go ahead they wanted to be polite to the newbie and wait for me.
So, we walked down the hill in the darkness and there were adorable tiny, white Christmas lights along the trail to our house. I was so cuted out. Men would never think of that!
I was the last one in the door and when I stepped in I thought I might be dead or asleep.
On the table, right when you enter, was every kind of snack known to man all laid out.
I'm talking home-made cookies, brownies, chips, candy and ALL my favorite treats.
I picked up two chocolate marshmallow treats and shoved them in my mouth before stepping one more foot.
After the kitchen is the huge lodge meeting room. It was drop-dead gorgeous. Knotty pine everything and a high ceiling like God likes when people that sing well sing.
I was amazed and saw bedrooms off the main room. I had lost Lynn when she dropped me off so I went through the first door and thanked Jesus for a bottom bunk since I come from a
long line of Bladder Day Saints.
I unpacked and went back out and sat on one of the many couches around a giant fireplace. Lara led us in a funny icebreaker where we would toss a soft ball around our giant circle and introduce ourselves and then answer the question on the ball.
It was funny because a few times the ball would get tossed too hard and the beautiful flowers and vases that they had hauled out for beauty would go flying in the air. It was pleasant to get to know the other women's names since they were almost all from the 9:00 service.
No one had started the fire, so I did that and Kathy Mier, one of the few women I knew since she was Troy's Sunday school teacher a long time ago, invited me to have a pedicure. Well, I had only ever had one years ago at Lovely nails so I decided it was a good idea. This fabulous lady named Jen was helping Kathy Baker, whom I think was the ringleader of this big event, getting everyone tubs of hot water with marbles in the bottom!
Imagine that! Now these ladies were about the most clever, organized people I had ever met and I nearly went into shock of the luxury of it all. I'm so used to camping with 200 cub scouts and their dads and for a minute I was thinking I wasted ten years as a scout leader when I could have been soaking my feet that whole time in a pan full of hot water and marbles!
Just when I thought it couldn't get ANY better than that, Jen starts pouring in all kinds of good-smelling stuff! I slunk down on my couch for a second and closed my eyes and tried to
imprint that feeling in a bottle inside my brain for when I needed to go to a "Happy Spot."
The happy spot was like this: Warm laughter, happy voices, guitars strumming, women singing that could actually hit the right notes, toasty, good-smelling feet, and all the stress in the world fading away until it was GONE! There was a group of knitters near our pedicure group and I was stunned at their talent. Karen had made a hat that looked like a cupcake if you can imagine that! Well, I have tried knitting AND crocheting and just don't have the patience for it myself.
But, no one admires the skill more than I do. I may be too lazy to learn to knit or read music but I'm not too lazy to use my energy in admiring people with the tenaciousness to master those skills! After we soaked and rubbed on scratchy lotion, the soft lotion and painted our nails we felt mighty FINE. Our toes were styling and I liked what Pearl said about doing it year 'round. Something about how it just makes you feel good even if no one sees them but you.
And you know what Mr. Blog? She is right because days later I'm freezing to death in our old drafty bus barn of a house and every time I change my socks I look at my cute toes and feel so much better. Like I am young and carefree and and pretty.
When my toes were done I jumped right in with the game group playing Pictionary Man.
Now I am competitive as the day is long when it comes to games. I love loud, rowdy, social games requiring thinking, acting, imagining and communicating. I was having a great time until nine when people started going to bed and it was suggested we switch to something quieter.
Well, I knew I couldn't switch gears in my state of rowdiness and be quiet so I went and sat on the couch with the knitters until ten. They had many interesting stories to tell.
I slept right until 8:15am which was breakfast time. My roommates Jeanne and Lorinda were up and gone when I got up. They were newbies too which was fun for us to discover everything at our first Bothell church retreat.
Now anyone that knows me knows I hate mornings. I'm a total bitch until I've had two cups of coffee and an hour of silence to go with it. But I zipped my lips together, in case something ungodlike might slip out, and staggered out to the big room. Well, what a shock to see the sun and the view! The wall of the lodge was windows and we had a panoramic view of the water and mountains and it was sparkling in God's glory just right.
I dashed back for clothes and scrambled up to the food house after the other stragglers for coffee. I shotgunned down four cups in a heartbeat so I could form a complete sentence in case someone talked to me. I was so excited to see a few people I knew that had just arrived from my service.
My pew-homie Joan Appleby was at my table with Laurie Vance and Zoe and my seat mate Patsy Ethridge-Neal turned out to be a retired marketing teacher and had been in the DECA program for years. She loved hearing that I had just volunteered the previous day and had done it herself for years and years. Our number of attenders grew to about forty by then and it was so hard to keep track of the new faces and names so I gave up and just enjoyed myself.
After breakfast, back at our waterfront houses, Reverend Lara started a really deep program called, "Holding It All Together." I couldn't help but think about my step-dad Lyle and his thirty years as a minister. I knew from the inside track how much time it must have take Lara to put together such an astounding program.
She started out with the flip chart of all our concerns. Then she talked about Paul and the Corinthians and the super-apostles. Pam and Robin and Apryl did a great skit playing the super-apostles. Well the Corinthians were darn impressed with the super-apostles that had visions and did faith-healing and miracles. Paul had to reign the Corinthians and make them realize that God put treasures inside of each of us and that the glory of God was internal and needed to be proclaimed internally not externally. Deep.
Next she read a story about the cracked pot. I had heard Lyle tell that in church decades ago and forgotten all about it. Long story short. The servant carries a cracked pot to a well for years. One day the pot apologizes for making extra work and the servant tells him a story. "I knew you were cracked years ago and planted seeds. As your treasure leaked out and watered my seeds I had beautiful bouquets for my master's house."
Then she asked us to ponder our treasures and Kathy Baker passed out the play dough she had made and we got a sheet of what to do with it. I decided to make my clay form while it was fresh in my mind and followed the directions and closed my eyes and started making my treasure.
Well, my puny hands made a small bright yellow bell because I believe my inner treasure is that I am the bell-ringer of glad tidings. Only snag is that it sure doesn't pay well. Hahaha.
We broke for lunch and free time and after lunch I finally got to check out the beach.
I was so excited to see a zillion sand dollars, especially the dime and quarter-sized ones that are my favorite that I hadn't seen since we were at Kalaloch in 1995.
Laurie Vance was there and she had found a young moon-snail shell that we examined closely. I walked down the beach hoping to shake off the ten zillion calories I had consumed in 16 hours and saw Phyllis and her daughter Cindy. Phyllis doesn't go to our church but how nice of her to come with her kid. We visited a bit and headed back for the session.
It was awful when we got back together because Claudia had gotten the call that her father-in-law, Ron Green, had passed away that morning at 93. I was so sad because I remembered delivering their mail at 18328 94Th avenue in 1980 and how nice they were to me way back then and when sissy and I joined the church in 1993, how kind he and Eleanor were to us. I thought about seeing him at church two weeks ago and shaking his hand and thinking he seemed really frail and how unhappy that made me feel inside.
It took many, many boxes of Kleenex before we were able to recover enough to think about our seminar again. Lara broke us up in small groups to share our inner-treasures with each other. Apryl had made this awesome magenta tree that she explained provided for every need we could ever have. I liked that a lot and decided it was oak and that if I felt wimpy I could just put Apryl's oak tree right inside my body and buck up and be strong if I needed to. Jen had made an image of a person holding another person and told us her image of God was a grandfather holding her wearing a fisherman's sweater. Well I liked that image very much indeed! Next Jeanne had made a pile of purple stones which we all mistook for a clump of grapes. She explained how we could move around over time and change and get bigger and smaller and I liked that a lot. I liked that we could be strong and change and that was okay. Claudia had made an acorn squash. I was so distracted that she had the faith and strength to stay in her state of sorrow it was hard to understand what she was saying at first. I missed a lot of what she was saying 'cause I was too busy admiring her. It was about her Hispanic ancestry and the desire of her father to work hard and prevent his family from being discriminated against. I'm not sure if I got her point since I couldn't concentrate but decided to think about the diversity of people and how to help marginalized people find their inner treasures in the future.
When we got back together in a big group, Lara put more on the clipboard about our treasures and we discussed how they related to our original concerns and it was very deep.
Lara shared her clay triangle that represented the figure of Jesus kneeling in Prayer
and how the image of the trinity inside of her gives her strength. I was very astounded by that but not really surprised because ever since she came to the church I have been in awe of her.
She is one of those people that we would say in the late sixties, "Walks the walk."
She is for sure my role model. I want to try to be more open to God and Jesus and to try to concentrate more on the commandments and how to implement them into my daily life. I was thinking about what my mom used to say, that one of the most important parts of church is the fellowship.
I was so out of my comfort zone thinking about going on a retreat with strangers but the important thing was that I did what my mom told me to do from heaven. Go get some Christian fellowship going in my life.
It was so painful to see Virginia and Karen and Debbie and Adrienne and Phyllis and Cindy together. I was so jealous that they got to breathe air together as mothers and daughters at the same time. I was so ashamed that as a teenager I never wanted to be a part of my mom's church life because I thought she was old and corny and embarrassing.
I would have gladly cut off my right hand to have my mom come down from heaven and sing a song with me at that retreat. And I was hoping no one could see my tears behind my glasses every time we sang.
Luckily we climbed the mountain to the chow house after that deep seminar and had our usual rowdy dinner to bring us back to the joys of life and being together.
After dinner I showed a few people my driving game and felt the horror of us finding a page number mistake on the game board. They liked it and I sent it home with Pam Chick since she has a fifteen year old.
Then we got the rowdy games going and what a blast we had. We started out with Pictionary Man and then played Apples to Apples, which I had never seen before but enjoyed emensely. As it got later and later our group shrank from a dozen down to six and we had to drag a table to the fire to stay warm. It was Pam, Debbie, Adrienne and Kathy Mier for Balderdash which I had never seen but it turned out to be my favorite since I'm so full of crap. We tried so hard to be quiet so people could sleep but it was very difficult because we were laughing so hard.
I overslept something terrible from staying up so late and found out there was coffee right there in our beachhouse. I thanked God and took four cups to my room and gulped them down while I was packing up all my stuff.
When we got to the chow house most people had left so we only had a few dozen people left. Kathy Mier mentioned the hats that the black women were wearing that came from the Skyway Methodist church. She had always wanted our group to have something like that but the hat idea went over like a lead balloon. So I told her I couldn't see why we couldn't do hats since one of the Skyway ladies told me they got the idea from a book about a Yaya sisterhood. Well Kathy said that she thought they might not like to be copied. So she and I went and talked to them and they told us all about them and that they did not want us to copy them. That left me and Kathy pondering, which is always fun!
Back at the beach house we had some great singing and praying and communion to end our time together down at the big house. I looked across the room at the picture of the women at the well.
One woman had a fifty pound clay pot full of water on her shoulder. I thought about how my butterfingers would drop that in a heartbeat. That my inner-treasure of cheer could grow acres of flowers. My shattered, cheerful life.
And that's okay.
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