This weekend was an incredibly special one for me. I was invited by Denise, who is the President of Spring Hill Camp to come share at this weekend women’s retreat. Spring Hill Camp is normally children’s camp with about 10,000 kids in the summer, but twice a year, on two weekends a year, they open it up for women’s retreat. Honestly I was expecting a little retreat center, maybe a few rustic cabins Instead, it is this massive kids camp with adventure courses, zip wires, kickball arenas, horseback riding and just about everything you can imagine that would make a kids camp a delight - and of course that made it pretty delightful for the women as well. But, one of the things that I found so special was that so many of the women this weekend really were so open to hear what I was trying to convey.
In fact, the morning after the first session, where I covered the subject of respect and how secretly insecure guys often are inside, a woman came up to me and said that she and her husband had been having some really serious marriage problems and that they had been in counseling but nothing was really working. She said she called him after that session and apologized to him and asked for his forgiveness because, as she put it, she realized that almost all the major issues were not him, they were her. It sounds like he was so touched by her call that he felt now they could really put the marriage back together. I was so amazed, that she would be so brave as to admit there really was a whole lot of fault that rested in her lap.
Now obviously there are two sides to every story, but I realize listening to her how much courage it takes personally as a women, to really realize when the issues we have been blaming on our husbands, really aren’t his problems, but are something that we are doing to pare him down. That’s obviously not the case in every situation, but it was so powerful for me to see this woman be willing to admit that in this case it was her problem. I probably had over the course of the weekend at least eight or ten women, tell me that after one or the other sessions that they had called their husband and apologized and said please forgive me. What a powerful, powerful encouragement to me, my staff, and all those who are working so hard toget this message out.