a few months ago (i think it was some months ago... at least one, b/c i was able to be in church on my break from the 3's sunday school class) the couples' retreat for our church was announced. it was to be held at the auburn hills hilton. close, comfortable, reasonably priced.... i'm game! but nathan was waiting to hear if he had a work thing that same weekend which would prohibit him from attending. so, we decided to wait and see what happened there before we went ahead and signed up. since it was at the hilton all i could think of was.... the pillows!.... i know it's horribly shallow to want to go to a couples' retreat for the pillows. don't worry. i was totally convicted about that silly thought about five seconds after i had it, so i started to pray about it.... something i'm learning in new and fabulous ways lately. i asked God to show us if this was something we should do: would it fit in our "flex" budget? would it work out with nathan's job? i just decided not to get all worked up about it and wait for the Lord to show us.
what felt like five minutes later.... ok, maybe two sundays later THE RETREAT WAS FULL. bummer. ok, so that must mean the Lord doesn't want us to go. problem solved. soon after that we found out nathan wouldn't be going on his work trip. bigger bummer. so we went ahead and talked to our sunday school teacher about getting on the waiting list. a few days later nathan got two phone calls. one from his friend in flint saying some mutual friends from CA were in town so we should come up and see them. one call was from our s.s. teacher saying if we wanted to go we were IN! totally torn. we were both going separate ways that evening so we talked about it for all of five seconds. before we left the house nathan said, "let's just go visit our friends b/c we never see them." ok, cool. after i finished nursery that night, one of our pastors asked me if we were planning on taking that open spot. i explained that we weren't going to take it so he could give it to someone else. woops.... i'm an idiot. little did i know nathan's wheels were turning and he had figured out that we could actually do both if we left about an hour earlier. so he was calling our s.s. teacher when he got done with vball practice and found out that i had inadvertently given away our spot. like i said... woops. so he told our teacher we would love to go back on the waiting list.
so we were deciding what to do with connor. should we take him to flint and hang out with our friends and maybe stop in to see aunt dawn? or should we keep planning on "the call" that MIGHT come saying we could get in to the retreat? the night before was full of idea tossing for about four contingency plans. we had babysitters lined up for all the "just in case" situations. see, one of the other young couples --awaiting their 4th child--was getting a lot of prayer from our house. if she had the baby we were IN! but nothing was happening. so there we were... friday afternoon.... bags packed.... should we take connor and plan on the "we're not going to the retreat" plan... or should we leave connor and go up to flint praying that a new baby would give us a spot in the hotel? seriously, i've never had so much trouble deciding what to do. both of us were saying we were torn b/c we weren't sure what to do. we decided.... about five mintues before leaving!.... that we were going to leave the little man and just head up to flint.
20 minutes down the road nathan's phone rings..... "hey, guys, you're in! wanna come?" you betcha! we were headed the wrong way for the hotel, so we made the call to turn around and tell our friends we wouldn't be able to make it. we were bummed we wouldn't see them, but we were THRILLED with the decision to go to the retreat. we were so thankful for the Lord working out all the details..... the timing working out, nathan not going on the work meeting, our pastoral staff working so hard to get us squeezed in at the last minute. if you're wondering, that cute couple didn't have the baby yet, so they were able to go too. we had so much fun. there were tons of couples from our class there, so i had a great time chatting with the girls from our class that i don't normally get to know b/c of teaching s.s. it was such a great time of learning together and strengthening our family from the top down. i certainly learned a lot just from how God worked it out for us to go, and we definitely had some great lessons from God's word.
and yes, the pillows were fabulous!
we just got all settled in for the night. daddy gave connor a nice haircut and gave him a bath for the morning... what a guy!
nathan sent connor out to me to show me his new style.... i seem to remember it being popular when we were in high school.
..............and here's our alfalfa!
7 comments:
This is way too cute!! What a looker that little man. We're so glad you enjoyed the retreat. And the "path to know God's will" was amazing. It does take that "flex time". Love you four!
still no baby yet. . .but glad you guys still got to come.
by the way, there is a nickname for that kind of hairstyle.
I love the last picture...that is one of those pictures that you will show at his wedding and will totally get some laughs!!
the picture of Conner is priceless - adorable!
hahaha! yes, dave i recall the name we gave it. i was wondering if that was universal or just something my brother-in-law thought up during his "squirrelly" days.
Ava says that connor looks like he has mouse in his hair. how do you spell that? is that right? now she is saying he is taking a bath.
it's mousse..... funny though.
Post a Comment