This post is the second part of my recap of the Women's Retreat I went to at Bear Lake. If you haven't read Part One please go back and read that one and then come read this one. You can Read Part One here.
This post starts with Friday which was the second day of the retreat. This was the first full day of the retreat.
I woke up at 7:00. If I'd been up a little earlier I could have gone to a Yoga class or a High Low Fitness Class. But I didn't feel like walking in late to either of them.
Instead I decided to walk down to the lake. My roommates were already up so I didn't have to worry about waking them up. I got dressed and went out to the upstairs living room to put on my shoes.
Another lady named Rachel was in our shared living room. She and I started talking while I put on my shoes. We were talking about Fiona Given's presentation from the night before. Rachel asked me, "Do you know anything about that Junia the apostle she was talking about?"
And boy did I ever. Fiona was the third person I'd heard talk about Junia in about a month. I showed Rachel the verse in Roman's where Paul mentions Junia and it seems that he is saying she is an apostle. Then told her the quick history of how Junia's name was masculinized in copies of the scriptures for centuries before being changed back. Then I directed her to the At Last She Said It podcast episode where I first heard about all this. (The other podcast where I heard about Junia was an episode of The Bible for Normal People, but I can't remember what episode that was.)
At 7:30 I paused my conversation with Rachel so I could go down to the lake. The retreat location was about two blocks from the beach.
It's been over a decade since I've been to this part of Bear Lake so I took a minute to explore Garden City. It's VERY different now. There are so many buildings everywhere. And the lake is so much lower than it used to be. Here's a view of the lake from the main highway.
She was like, "Oh YEAH, Of Course!"
She also let me come over and do my make up. We shared the mirror and got to know each other a little bit. Her name was Talia. She was supposed to be sleeping on the top bunk in a room in the C Section of the building. But she had knee surgery recently and wasn't so sure about climbing up and down the ladder. So she'd been given an extra bed in one of the double rooms in A section. She had to give up that bed when the guest would arrive on Friday afternoon, but she said she just had a feeling she needed to be in the A side of the house. She said, "I think I'll just sleep on the couch in this living room tonight." I was like, "I slept on it for part of the night, it's comfy."
She asked me how I found out about the retreat and I told her, "I listen to the podcast. But I don't listen very often anymore because it just makes me sad that I don't have a lot of leadership opportunities in my ward." She was so kind with my feelings about that.
And equally important - she had access to a blow dryer. It was her roommate's, but the roommate had let her use it and Talia said I might as well use it too. So I went down to breakfast with nice hair and a new friend.
Breakfast was at 8:30. They had a yogurt bar with all sorts of fruit for toppings. There were also muffins and some eggs and spinach.
I ate in the big dining room for breakfast. I loved the conversations I was having with the women around me, but I vowed to never eat in that room again. It was just too loud.
After breakfast we met up in the conference room in the other building for another speaker. We had another worship song and then were introduced to Sara Strong. She spoke to us about the things she and her husband implemented when serving as the Mission President couple in Arkansas before and during the pandemic.
I REALLY liked her presentation. I have a lot of opinions about LDS missions. I've been concerned for a long time about how toxic mission culture can be. Sara had the same concerns and they were confirmed when she started the mission. She and her husband spent 3 months observing how things were and then they went to work trying to correct things. They did some pretty out of the box things, but they WORKED.
For example, when they started their mission they had 44 missionaries that were on their mental health watch list. When they ended their mission they had 2.
This was a presentation about what she did for mission culture. But in a broader context it was about thinking outside the box and doing what needed to be done regardless of tradition or even handbooks. It was so inspiring.
My favorite quote was when she was talking about when she received the mission call. She said her thoughts went like this, "If I'm being called then He knows who I am and He wants what I've got."
I would have loved to talked to Sara after her presentation. Most of the speakers were also attending the conference and it was cool to rub shoulders with them But Sara had a brief window of time she could attend. She came in that morning and she slipped out the door while we were getting instructions for our next activity.
I hope Kurt interviews her for the podcast one day because the stuff she talked about was GAME CHANGING. I took so many notes.
After Sara's presentation we were told we would do something referred to as the Vow of Silence. This was 30 minutes of quiet time where we'd have a chance to journal and pray. We'd do this after four of the sessions.
I found a comfy couch in the rec building for my quiet time and thought about the presentations I'd been to so far.
After that was over we met up in the big living room in the center of the house. Before the retreat we'd been told to bring something that represented a moment in our lives when we "made a pivot, or gained new awareness, or had an experience that deeply impacted" us.
We were going to break off into groups of four and show our item and then tell the story. Then the people in our group could ask questions about the item.
The kitchen crew had worked hard to make boxed lunches. Karri read off our groups, we picked up our boxes and found somewhere to eat our lunch while sharing our stories.
Assignments were made alphabetically by our first names. At first I thought I was going to end up in a group with Whitney Johnson which would have been INCREDIBLE, (she's an amazing business guru) but it didn't work out that way. Instead I was in a group with Tammi, Teri, and Talia (yes the Talia from sharing a sink that morning).
I was bummed about missing out on Whitney Johnson, but I'm so happy that I was in the group I was in. Teri and I had talked that morning before Sara's presentation. Talia and I had talked while putting on make up. I was looking forward to talking with both of them again. And I was happy I had a chance to really meet Tammi. I'd talked to Tammi in passing and I REALLY wanted to get to know her better. This was the perfect opportunity.
I'd been looking forward to this ever since I heard about it. At first I planned to bring my Yellowstone key chain as the object that represented a shift because deciding to live in Yellowstone and then actually pulling it off was a HUGE shift in my life.
But at some point during the last day I'd decided that a better thing to show would be my "Protestant Women of the Chapel" pin. I've had this pin on the straps of my scripture bag for several months and I'd brought my bag with me so I had the pin with me. And it represented a deep shift.
I'm not sure I've ever really laid out the story on this blog. If you've been reading long enough you saw it happen in real time, but I've never told this in short story form. So here you go.
When we lived in Alabama I didn't feel super connected to my ward. Our church building was 20 minutes away and so it was quite the commitment to go there. We had monthly Relief Society Activities, (and I was on the committee for a while), but there was a significant amount of time where I just didn't feel very connected to the ward.
It didn't help that Brandon and I were serving as Primary Teachers. I don't like serving in primary when I'm still getting to know a ward. It's like "how can we make it even harder to meet adults."
Meanwhile the Wings Chapel on post was 5 minutes away. The women's group with that chapel held monthly craft activities, and they provided childcare. I started to attend those events. It helped that my friend Becca was the LDS chaplain's wife and she was attending the events too. I was like, "If Becca is going then this must be fine."
Eventually I started going to the Protestant Women of the Chapel events that were held weekly. They had a big welcome event in the fall and I was given my Protestant Women of the Chapel Pin at that event. They would have brunch and sometimes speakers spoke to the whole group and other times we split into small groups. I joined a group studying Romans.
It was in this small group that I learned about a Jesus that I'd never met before. A Jesus that loved me regardless of whether or not I was reading my scriptures, going to the temple, or even praying. A Jesus who was willing to meet me where I was and help me with my struggles. A Jesus who strengthened me, not because I was "good," but because he was good.
And knowing this Jesus was crucial to the point of life I was in. Things were falling apart with Flight school and Brandon's Army Career in general. I was having thoughts of "oh if we'd just gone to the temple more often God wouldn't have let this happen." Or "We should have made family prayer a bigger priority. We weren't faithful enough so God is punishing us."
Learning about this unconditional Jesus completely changed those thought patterns. God wasn't punishing us. This wasn't because we weren't faithful enough. It was just something that happened. It was just life. And life doesn't work out perfectly.
I've never been the same since meeting that Jesus. You'll often hear me speaking up in church lessons saying things like, "We need to remember that Jesus will help us with this. We don't have to do it on our own." Or "You don't have to be perfect for Jesus to help you. He wants to help you now."
Anyway, that was my story. Talia, Teri, and Tammi shared theirs. (Tammi's life changing object was her podcast app. Yep this was someone I wanted to know.)
We were sitting in the living room area outside my bedroom. The couches were comfy and there was really no reason to leave. So we just kept hanging out and talking. Teri left at some point, but Talia, Tammi and I kept going. Tammi had been the gospel doctrine teacher of her ward until recently when she was called to be RS president. We had some pretty in depth conversations about those callings. She was like, "Half the ward things I'm a heretic." And I was like, "Hey you still have those cool callings. That gives me hope for me."
We were joined by Jessica and Salina. Salina was a power house. She was the ward activity director, but she wasn't in charge of parties and stuff. She was in charge of building ward unity. She had some AMAZING ideas about building unity in her ward that she'd actually been able to do. They'd actually cut Sunday School in half and had small group meetings in order to try to build a sense of community in the ward. I was like, "HOW did you convince anyone to do that?" (It helped that her bishop was really committed to building unity in the ward.)
One thing impressed me enough that I put it in my note book. She'd started asking people in her ward two questions.
1. What are your spiritual needs?
2. If you could redesign church to fit your needs what would it look like?
She said many people were like, "What are spiritual needs?" That was a big indicator of a big problem.
We also threw in a whole discussion about Heavenly Mother, because WHY NOT?
It was an afternoon well spent.
At 3:30 we met back up at the conference room. The chairs had been rearranged. The previous night they'd been in rows with a center aisle. Now they were in a big circle around the whole room.
I sat next to a lady named Patricia from Hawaii. She was so warm and loving right away.
For our worship song they dimmed the lights and told us to pretend we were at a Christian Rock Concert. Everyone turned on their cell phone lights and we stood around the front of the room with our hands in the air. It was really fun.
I was really looking forward to this session. This was DeAnna Murphy's presentation. If you want to hear my favorite episode with DeAnna go here. (The part where she talks about puzzle pieces at minute 33:30.)
DeAnna's presentation ended up being where this conference took a turn for me. I went into the conference with the attitude of "I'm fine. I just need to learn some more leadership skills and get some more tools and then I'll be even better."
I came out of DeAnna's presentation with the realization that "maybe I need to work on myself and fix some things so I can be a better leader."
This session left me feeling pretty raw. DeAnna had us do a little bit of a life map where we charted our lows and our highs. She had us write down three lows in our lives and think about what those lows made us thing about ourselves. Then we turned to the person next to us and told them about our lows.
I'd avoided writing down anything about my childhood. I didn't do it on purpose, it was just easier to think of three things from adulthood. But when my partner, Patricia, told me about a low from her childhood we both got really teary eyed. I recognized the feelings she was sharing with me. And I realized I probably had some deep seeded emotions in my childhood that I needed to face head on.
Then we told about our highs and what we'd learned from those and how they helped heal some of our lows.
I tried to short cut the work on this part of the class. Rather than actually think about it, I already knew what high and low would be the best "story" to tell. So for my low I talked about that winter we lived with my in laws after Brandon got out of the Army. Those of you who read this blog back then know that this was an awful time in my life. I consider it one of my lowest points.
That low point led directly to me applying for a job in Yellowstone, buying an RV, and then our family had the BEST summer ever. It was one of the highest highs of my life.
I've told that story a lot. I love that story. It's inspiring. And wonderful. And just the ultimate happy ending. And it is.
BUT then Patricia asked a follow up question that no one has ever asked.
"Did you ever fix your relationship with your in-laws?"
And I was like, "UUUUUMMMMMM no, I actually didn't." We smoothed over that rough time and basically just never talk about it. But as for actually fixing the relationship. No. I still have a ton of resentment about the time I spent living there. And I know it still affects me.
And so then I was left thinking about that. My triumphant story actually had a unresolved subplot.
DeAnna went on to do a little object lesson. She had a beautiful glass pitcher. All the lights were turned off and she shined a light through the pitcher. It the light shown and lit up the glass.
Then she had a pitcher that was filled with rocks. She shined the light again, but it didn't show up at all. The rocks completely blocked the light.
She said the pitcher was like our heart and the rocks were things that were unresolved. Most of them had to do with fear. She challenged us to look at our fears and then commit to letting them go. That way we could get rid of the rocks in our hearts.
I left that session with a lot of thoughts about the rocks in my heart. I'd done my best to ignore them for years, but now I was painfully aware of them.
I think I'll be working on this for a LONG time.
We had 30 minutes of quiet time and I wrote a lot of stuff in my notebook.
Then it was time for dinner. We had chicken kabobs, salad, and grilled peaches that were just divine.
At 7:00 we were back to the conference room for another speaker. The chairs were still in a circle. I went to sit by a lady I hadn't talked to yet. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she didn't seem very talkative. I took it as "she doesn't like you very much." So I stopped talking to her and started talking to Salina who'd come in and sat by me.
I was like, "Well you can't win them all."
The worship music this time was a calm ballad. Called So Will I (100 Billion X) by Hillsong Worship (If you know about the recent Hillsong scandals please don't let the Hillsong connection ruin the song for you.)
Melanie, the worship music leader, came over and put her arms around some of the ladies near me. They all swayed together. The not-talkative lady next to me ended up in the swaying group. And she reached out to me and put her arm around me to bring me into the group.
Instantly I went from "she doesn't like you" to "she likes you." It's funny how physical touch did what talking couldn't do. The rest of the conference I had the BEST feelings about that lady. And I even had a conversation with her on Saturday.
Our speaker for that session was none other than Kurt Francom. He said he'd wanted to record a live episode, but had trouble finding a suitable quest. So he decided to interview us as a group. I'm not sure how good of an interview it ended up being, but it was a pretty cool workshop. We were divided into groups and talking about different things we struggle with as leaders in the church.
I can't really remember what group I was in (even though I'm pretty certain Salina and I came up with the topic). What I do remember is what someone shared.
A lady named Marnee talked about how she was the Young Women's secretary in her ward. She volunteered to do leadership training for the youth.
When she said that I was like, "oh, I should probably be doing that." Not leadership training per se, but just volunteering to help.
If you've been reading since January you know I have STRUGGLED with the Young Women Program in my ward. The details aren't important, but I've been very vocal to pretty much everyone about my frustrations. But I haven't done a single thing to help the situation. I've just been content to complain. I haven't offered help AT ALL.
I realized this was a huge rock sitting in my heart that I needed to get rid of soon.
This was on my mind the rest of the time Kurt was speaking. I'm sure he said some really cool stuff. And I'm sure others shared great things. But I was sitting there realizing that I was a pretty crappy leader if all I did was complain about the problems and never offered to help.
That was a heavy realization.
When the presentation was over Salina said, "we'll I'm going to chat with Fiona Givens for a while." That sounded AMAZING, but it also felt like too much work for me at the moment. I was pretty much done with learning and just wanted to relax for the rest of the evening.
I'd heard Melanie say she was planning to get in the hot tub so I went over to her and confirmed that she planned to do that. We planned to meet at the hot tub at 9:00.
Most people were still hanging out at the conference room and I realized this was a perfect time to take a Marco Polo of the house for my family. I wanted to do it when I didn't have to worry about a lot of people being on the camera. So I grabbed my phone and went around the house showing things off.
Here's the video of that.
I also did a video of going down the slide. It's mostly just my feet so I won't upload that here. But it was fun. I was dizzy when I was done.
Then I did a video of going up to my room. It's a shorter video so you can see it here.
My kids loved the videos and are begging me to take them to Bear Lake so they can go down that slide.
I went to my room and changed into my swimming suit. One of my roommates was already getting into bed. I was like, "I haven't slept well all week - no reason to expect to sleep well tonight."
I went out to the pool. The kitchen staff was already in the hot tub. They were all ladies close to my age. One of them was Kerri's daughter. She and her friends had catered a wedding for another one of Kerri's friends and they'd done such a good job with that event that when they volunteered to do this Karri's was like, "OKAY!"
They told me to go down the slide. I joked, "I feel like you are hazing me." But I went down the slide and landed in water that was warm. Then I came over and got into the hot tub. It was so nice.
Melanie came out and went down the slide too. Then she came in the hot tub. Almost as soon as she got in the bubbles all turned off. We were like, "It's only 9:00, this is supposed to be on until 10:00." But we couldn't find anywhere to turn the bubbles and the heat back on. We sat in the hot tub as it got colder and colder. Most of the kitchen staff gave up and got out. Melanie did too, but just as she got out everything magically came back on.
Melanie and I ended up being the only ones in the Hot Tub. This was something I was looking forward to. Back in 2019 I'd listened to a podcast that I was pretty certain that Melanie had been on. I asked her, "You are in charge of Heart of a Women. Were you on the Heart of a Women podcast that Kurt recorded a few years ago?"
She told me that she'd been on the episode with two other women. I asked her, "Are you the one that talked about God's nick name for you?"
She said yes.
And then I just was blurting stuff out. I was like, "Oh my gosh, you are Feisty Girl! I loved that story. It made me cry. It made me feel not alone. I was on a walk when I listened to that and I could show you the EXACT spot where I heard you tell that story."
(You can listen to that podcast here. The story I'm talking about starts at 33:10)
Melanie dealt with my fan-girling really well and we moved onto talking about Heart of a Women. I've been interested in that retreat ever since I heard that episode. I've always thought about going someday. Melanie invited me to come next year.
We also talked about the Bible Study group I'm in. Most people I'd brought it up to were like "Oh wow! That's different, how did you end up in that?" Melanie asked me, "What translation do they use?" And we talked about the ESV bible and how it's a word for word translation.
We had a lovely time talking in the hot tub. But eventually we got to the point where we felt like we were cooking. So we said goodbye and got out for a cool walk to the house.
I changed into pajama's but I wasn't even close to ready for bed. So I went down by the fire and joined in with a conversation around the little fire. I had hot chocolate in one hand and a super warm fire nearby so I warmed up very fast.
While I was taking with the ladies there I saw Salina, Tammi, and one other lady come out of the conference building with Fiona. They'd been talking to her the whole time I was goofing off with polos, and hot tubs, and fire pits.
That conversation died down and I went to the larger fire. (Where Fiona had settled down to continue talking with the three ladies) At first I wasn't really involved in any conversation. But soon I started talking to Angelique and we had a deep conversation. I was really happy I got to know her.
At midnight Angelique decided she wanted to go to bed. She stood up and said, "goodnight" and suddenly the whole fire went out. It was so funny. It was a gas fire on a timer, but everyone took that as a sign that it was time for bed.
(Salina was like, "I can't believe I talked to Fiona Givens for over three hours!")
I still wasn't exactly sleepy so I went upstairs and sat on the big couch. Talia was up there getting ready for bed. She was still planning to sleep on the couch separate. Somewhere during the day I'd either overheard someone talk about couch beds or I'd just figured out that some of the couches had to be pull outs. So I told Talia, "hey, I think the couch turns into a bed." She pulled the cushions off and found that it did pull out.
There were extra sheets and pillows on the TV stand. But there wasn't a blanket. I went downstairs and asked if anyone knew where extra blankets were. One of the kitchen ladies said she'd seen some in a closet by the front door. So I found that and there were about 6 blankets in there. I brought one back for Talia.
She climbed in bed and I kept sitting on the couch. We talked like that for about 10 minutes until she said, "Hey, I'm fine if you just get in bed with me." And I was like, "I was going to ask if that was okay."
So I climbed in bed and we kept talking. She had some crazy health lights that she let me try out. One was for my head, another for my throat, and another for my stomach. I'm not sure if they did anything, but they were fun to try.
I told Talia about my realization that I needed to make things right with the Young Women leaders in my ward. She's a life coach type person and so she started doing some sort of guided thought process regarding my relationship with them. We worked out words to say I'm sorry and to let them know I appreciated them.
I was like half asleep at this point so I'm not sure exactly what we talked about, but it was such a wonderful experience.
Then she prayed for us. She remembered our conversation from way back that morning. She said something like, "bless Valerie that she will have peace around the fact that she hasn't had the opportunities for leadership that she desires. Help her know that you love her anyway."
Again I don't remember much, but it was just all so kind and loving.
I'd kind of planned to get up and go to my own bed at some point but I ended up just falling asleep next to Talia. We said it was interesting how it felt like we were sisters and not strangers.
When we met while sharing a sink that morning I'd had no idea we'd end up sharing a bed and talking until 1:00 AM that night. It was a lesson about how quickly you can bond with someone.
I woke up around 7:00 and felt like it was time to text the Young Women's president. I'd planned to maybe talk to her in person. But this felt like something that needed to be resolved before I participated in any more sessions.
So I wrote her a text and actually used the phrase "I'm sorry." Do you know how rarely I say those words to people outside my family? This was a huge growth moment for me.
I told her I wanted to be helpful in any way I could. And I said a lot of other things too.
She replied back later. It was a kind text too.
I was so happy to have that rock out of my heart. But I was also a little curious what other realizations I'd have on this retreat. Because we still had another FULL day.
AND I think we'll stop there for now. I'll tell you all about Saturday in another post.
Thanks for reading.
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