CHRP- Christ Renews His Parish

This weekend I had the privilege to attend a retreat put on by Prince of Peace Catholic Church for our parish Good Shepherd Catholic Community. There were only thirty women from our church allowed to go based on first come first serve. We arrived to Holy Trinity Saturday morning at 8am. Our cell phones and watches were taken because we were on "God's time." I will not go into any details about the many testimonies we heard but I will talk about how I am now forever changed.....again. My small group was a little awkward for me at first because I knew a couple of the women but we quickly opened up and it wasn't long before we were sharing tears. You see, I continue to carry this guilt about being a working mom. For me I am angry when I get home, my kids are whining because they haven't seen me all day and my expectations for how a home should run and used to run are changed and I feel like it's mostly because of my job. I believe while my personal faith has grown my marriage and my role as a parent have been suffering. I will say this, I LOVE my job, I love it so much it hurts me to say I need to leave. I have made relationships that will forever be in my heart. I care so much about the people I work with and know I will miss them so much. The reality is I will probably be of more service to them as a volunteer again because I wont be limited to my 20hrs during the day. Kim, Sarah and Barbara have had an amazing impact on my life and have without knowing it showed me that my timing is a little off with working in the church. They are all three amazing women of Christ, Wives, and Mom's. Anyway back to the retreat, my favorite part was coming out of confession. It was there that I felt my heart open to the Lord and I sure did let my tears go, fortunately I was surrounded by the love of my new "fast friends" and a few "old friends" Theresa was so comforting to me and I feel like I can tell her anything she is on her way to sainthood in my book. I spent the rest of that evening in tears and I was emotionally drained at the end of the night. Today was great as well. I was able to really open up to my group members and I feel bonded with them. We all received letters of praise from family and friends and I can't say enough about how special this was to me, I received over 40 letters of encouragement, praise, and love. I can only describe it as wonderful! During mass most of the women were emotional during the washing of the feet but that didn't really trigger the tears. However, what did was when in the prayer of intentions the reader stated something about marriages, I cried....and cried. I don't really want to go into those details yet but I guess what I am trying to say is that my life and what I am doing was really put into perspective this weekend. I am not able to balance everything like I hoped and even thought I could. Do I feel like I failed? No, more like my timing was a little off. Thank you GOD for letting me see this before it was too late. I am excited about putting a retreat on for members of our parish in August. Hopefully I can find the strength to reveal in testimony to future CHRP members my path to God, and touch someone like I was this weekend.