SHINE Women's Gathering, 2025

Last Friday and Saturday, I joined a group of 100 women, mostly from my church, to attend our annual women's retreat/gathering. We do an overnight gathering every other year, and then a local gathering in the years in between. This year we met locally in a large church facility right downtown in Columbus.  It left me exhausted (and quite sick, too), but I feel renewed and recharged (and encouraged) for the year ahead. I'm so, so thankful to God for leading us to a church with a thriving women's ministry. 

To say that our team faced quite a bit of spiritual warfare in the days leading up to the retreat would be an understatement. Satan definitely did not want this gathering to go smoothly. Lots of sickness, busyness, bad weather, and just plain overwhelm. But God made it happen, hearts were stirred, truth cemented in us, people connected and shared in deeper, more vulnerable ways, new friendships began,  and just in time before we all got "flooded in" for a few days. 

Our theme was the Holiness of God. We are called to be holy because God is holy. We cannot be holy without God. God's holiness is sacred, separate, and utterly pure. 

Meg, our first speaker (and leader of our Shine ministry), led us through many foundational Scripture verses characterizing God as holy. She put us in a pursuit to fear God out of our love for Him, rather than loving Him out of fear. Her message set the tone for the rest of the weekend as we stood back in awe of God.

Following Meg, Reed shared her testimony of how God relentlessly pursued her as a young adult until she surrendered her heart to Him. Such a beautiful story of how God used her four-year-old daughter to speak God's truth to her, and now to see how she pours her heart into children's ministry because she knows personally the power of a child's faith. Reed and I have only recently gotten to know each other through an intimate group that meets weekly, and we found out we attended high school together in Warsaw, IN! I treasure the new friendship we have made.

After the speaker and testimony on Friday night, we had the option of sticking around for a bit to make Scripture memory bracelets, decorate journals, play in the annual spoons tournament, or just fellowship and make new friends. I think I stayed until about 10:00, and then I started to fade. Lol. 

All the beads to make bracelets. I made one for our theme verse: 

1 Samuel 2:2--There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. 

I used the first letter of each word to help me memorize it (which I haven't done yet). 

This display gets set up at all of our events with different encouraging Scriptural notes. I've had the privilege of making many of them, as that was my first "step" into this ministry. They call it the "Take what you need" display. Now that I know a lot of the women in the church, I've been encouraged to see these cards up in many of their kitchens or homes when I've been invited to visit. 

This is a new friendship this year that I treasure, my Dominican coworker, also a pastor's daughter and very passionate about Bible study. She's a gift from God to me, and she's told me the same about God bringing me into her life. I had to make sure I snapped a picture as we were both decked out in pink!

It was quite a challenge to get back up early Saturday morning and drive back into town in the rain. I felt off, sleep-deprived, congested, and scattered. I'd been battling a slight cough all week (despite staying home one day to nurse it and catch up on sleep). Thankfully I didn't forget to stuff some cold/allergy medicine and VICKS tissues in my pocket at the very last minute because that's what kept me moving.

But what an encouraging sight to see as we set up breakfast for the morning, our prayer team bathing our day in prayer. Without prayer, our weekend could have no eternal impact. 

Our wonderful worship team began our morning by leading us in beautiful worship songs, reminding us again of God's holiness. 

I'd received some rather disheartening news from a close friend in Texas the night before, so she was heavy on my heart that morning as I sang and prayed to God.

I was supposed to go up after the worship time to introduce our first speaker for the day, so I walked over to the side of the room to be ready. I ended up standing beside a lady on the prayer team (gray sweatshirt in the corner), and God lifted my spirit when he reminded me that that particular woman  happened to be the one person in the room who personally knew my dear friend in Texas and her family.

So we went to the prayer room together later and prayed for my friend together. 

Our first speaker for Saturday was my friend, Debbie, who is also incredibly passionate about women's Bible study. She sure gave us a lot to meditate and chew on! We are called to walk in holiness, which can only come from God, but we were reminded that God does not do the walking for us. We must discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, as 1 Timothy 4:7 tells us. We talked about the Word of God being our weapon and how we need to daily engage with the Word by hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on it, so we are prepared to fight against the deeds of the flesh. She specifically focused on meditating on it--ruminating on it, chewing it over and over until we get all of the nourishment out of it. 

After Debbie, my friend, Theresa, bravely shared her testimony. Such a powerful reminder that God will relentlessly pursue our hearts and that He can redeem anything for good. Now she serves as a Biblical counselor to women who have suffered through many of the things God allowed her to go through earlier in life. Theresa and I are on the Biblical counseling team together at church, have already been to one conference together in Texas, will be going to another one together in Texas soon, and we also share a similar experience/heartache in the adoption world. 

We took a long break for lunch, personal reflection, and fellowship. I enjoyed sweet conversation with my two coworkers and let them know how much I value working with both of them. There are only about 13 certified teachers in the Legado program (with several teacher assistants, too) in our entire community, and it's a blessing to know that three of us are at the same church, being fed the same spiritual nourishment every week and even at events like these. In fact, it was here at this very gathering two years ago where I met Meg (the one in the middle) and found out that there was even a Dual Language school in Columbus. Next year she will be my teammate, and I could not be more thrilled and blessed by that. 

After lunch, our last speaker, Emily, spoke about the importance of putting on holiness. Because without holiness, no one will see the Lord. So we're on a mission. Every day. 

After Emily, my friend, Bev, shared her testimony. Bev is our pastor's mom, who just moved here about a year ago with her sister. Mike and Matt have done a lot of work for them to get their house the way they want it, and they have a lot of fun over there! So I was so excited when I went to a Bible study this fall and met a lady sitting beside me who said, "Oh, you're Mike's wife!" We became fast friends, and she prayed for me specifically about whether or not I was supposed to go on the trip to the Dominican. 

It was so inspiring to hear her testimony about how God pursued her and made himself known to her as a young adult, specifically after her sister had been praying for her. Even more inspiring the next day when her son preached a message from Acts about how God lines up so many details (even hardships) and people in order to draw a heart to him. Had God not reached Bev's heart, we may not have ever heard her son preach that message. I'm sure neither one had any idea how intertwined their messages would be this weekend. 

In addition to all of the speakers, testimonies, worship, and personal reflection, we also had table talks where we got to know the people at our tables better and had some really good discussion about the Scriptures shared.  

By 4:30, the event ended and our team (along with many helpers) pitched in to clean and pack everything up. By this time my medicine had completely warn off, and I felt miserable physically. About an hour later, we all left in the pouring down rain. The emergency management system kept sending messages about imminent flooding happening soon. As I drove through town in the rain, I noticed that the creek waters were definitely very high, and it looked like the very road I drove down would be covered in water shortly. 

Sure enough, by morning, the road was completely washed out, along with nearly all of the main roads downtown, leaving many without a way to get into town. Our church live streamed the service, so it was shared all over Facebook. I was thankful that God knew ahead of time that I would stay home on Sunday and get the rest I needed to recover more quickly. 

The flooding was so bad that we ended up having an E-learning day for school on both Monday and Tuesday. I was supposed to have my evaluation yesterday morning, and I wondered how it would go since I was so sick when I woke up on Sunday morning. Sometimes God gives us the strength we need to keep going after a big event like this, and sometimes He just gives us rest. I'm definitely soaking up the rest these last three days after feeling so depleted since my trip to the Dominican. 

As I sit and reflect over the weekend, I'm reminded of God's purpose for the local church and the Christian family that it is. I think back to two years ago when I attended my first Gathering and started to really connect with other women. I'll be forever grateful for meeting Meg at that event because that meeting started my journey back into bilingual education. Now here I am two years later, and not only did I get to sit at the registration table and literally welcome each woman to our gathering, but I got to listen to friends, not strangers, speak the Word and share their testimonies. I sat amongst ladies that I've traveled with (either to Texas or to the Dominican Republic) and grown close to, done Bible study with, served on a ministry team with, worked with, gone out for coffee with many times, gone walking together with, met with weekly in different groups, and shared my heart with, prayed with, had dinner with, etc. The Church is family, and I love how my family just keeps growing and extending in this still fairly new chapter of my life. I never knew even five years ago just how much family I still had yet to meet back in Indiana.