Want to come to my pity party?

Last weekend, I was at Highland Lakes Baptist Encampment for their annual Ladies' Retreat. I went to Highland Lakes for church camp in junior high and still have memories--good and bad--that I hadn't thought much about until I went back.

I had been asked back in October to do a workshop for ministry wives on the expectations that we live under and how to exchange pleasing others for following Jesus. A day and a half before the retreat was to begin, I was told that they had changed the title and were including all the retreatants--and no one had told me! Their assumption was, I found out later, that all women live under the expectations of others and would benefit. I, of course, had tailored my workshop to the UNIQUE expectations that ministry wives live under. Aaaarrrggh! They were very nonchalant about it, assuming that, once I got there and saw who came to my workshop, I could decide what to do. This, of course, was after hours of preparation on my part.

So I ended up speaking about half the time to the ministry wives who attended and the other half to women in general. The feedback I got on the evaluation was that ministry wives felt that it didn't allow them to talk honestly because there were other women there and that they wished they had had their own session. So, there.

The only agendas I had for the weekend were to bless ministry wives and to meet ministry leaders from Austin to continue to build my referral base. It wasn't really a paying gig, so I needed some other reason to be there. When I got there, I quickly realized that there was no one from Austin at the retreat. I met one woman from Austin and all the rest were from the small, surrounding Central Texas towns (Llano, Lampasas, Burnet, some tiny ones I never heard of). So, pooh--struck out on both counts.

I leave tomorrow for the BGCT Ministry Wives retreat at Glen Rose to do a workshop on Ministry Transitions. Again, not really a paying gig, so I had three goals: to bless ministry wives, to meet other ministry wives from Austin, and to spend the weekend with my long-time and much-missed friend FrostyRogers. Well, registration is way down this year and as far as anyone knows, no one else is attending from Austin and my friend is sick and can't go with me. Double pooh.

The best moment at Highland Lakes this past weekend was sitting on a bench overlooking a royal blue lake when deer thundered past right in front of me. (I was really delighted until I had the thought, "I wonder what they're running from . . . ." But I guess they were just running for fun.) And this weekend, I'll be in beautiful surroundings again and with very nice people that I've met through the years of being involved in Baptist work. So, it's good.