During this season of thanksgiving, I'd like to express gratitude to the girls of Durand United Methodist Women's Organization. Thank you for sharing your weekend of retreat with me. Your laughter and tears and the helpful suggestions you offered about my ensuing mammogram are ineffably appreciated! Thanks for inspiring me with your Babyless Shower, your 'We're Not Church Ladies Attitude,' and your open conversational honesty.
Now that I know you all a bit better, I can honestly say that I'm proud you've taken the moniker Girl Talk . . . God Talk for your group. May all of your talkings continue!
As I was driving home from Rockford, I was thinking about a comment a woman in your group made that one of my books was normal. In the moment, I was a bit taken back. But, as I processed in my car on the way home, I wondered if that may have been the most profound compliment anyone has ever given me about my writing; and proof that my mission of bringing the divine to the daily, the holy to the human - - meeting God in the ordinary - - is being accomplished. So, thanks for those sweet words.
My prayer for all of you is that you'll continue to grow in faith and friendship. And, as you do, that that you'll continue to reach out to your community and to the world. (Also, that you'll hang in there with Lewis' Four Loves.) That books is one of my favorites. My husband, Bryan, and I used the following quote from that masterpiece in our wedding program:
love
Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - - if possible, wealth; Appreciative-love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all. Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative-love says: "We give thanks thee for thy great glory."
love
So, here I am, blogging and sending a big dose of Appreciative-love your way. Thanks again! And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and yours!
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