I just came home from a retreat called "Healing Life's Hurts" with Fr. Matt Linn and it was awe inspiring. Hosted at Scarritt Bennett Center in conjunction with Dovehouse Ministries and AmberNest Spiritual Direction, the retreat title spoke to me in my continuing path of healing from childhood sexual abuse. My expectations going in were that there would be reliving of pain and trauma. Crying and mourning, followed by a sense of healing and recovery. It was so much more!
Father Linn (Matt) led us in understanding the need to embrace God's love with gratitude, and how gratitude can be found in all of our experiences. Through a process of feeling our emotions we came to understand our experiences, forgive ourselves, understand forgiving others, and learned to be God's conduit to share His love with others.
I was strengthened to see my healing path, how far I have come, and inspired to continue sharing my life experiences to help others feel God's love while realizing they are not alone in their suffering. I see ways to serve God by serving others that will help them heal right along with me.
What a blessing!
To all of the organizers and participants I want to say a huge THANK YOU! I'm sure this will become recurring fodder for more posts in the future, but for now I wanted to you all to know about this wonderful weekend while it was fresh on my mind.
Blessings to all!
There ARE blessings to be found even in the bad...but sometimes we have to look BACK on the situation to see them! So happy to hear you had an awesome experience at this retreat!
ReplyDeleteIt blesses me to hear that you were blessed this weekend and then wanted to share it! xo
ReplyDelete