I Am Open To The Possibilities

 

Last month I wrote about the concept of “good luck, bad luck, who knows?” – about how we never know in any situation what is really the best outcome. I have found whenever I am writing a new talk or putting a retreat together, whatever the subject matter is – it starts to “work me.” Whatever needs to come up to be healed or looked at will inevitably come to the surface for me to deal with. Well, as soon as I wrote about the “good luck, bad luck, who knows?” concept, I had the opportunity to live it.

 

For many years I have been hired by various churches or organizations to facilitate their women’s retreats but I am still relatively new to producing my own. I must admit I sweat a little bit when I plunk down a big deposit for a certain amount of rooms hoping that I will be able to fill it. Last month I was concerned about a retreat I was facilitating at Alderbrook Resort in the Pacific Northwest. The pictures of the place were beautiful, I heard rave reviews about it, and I dove in thinking that women would flock to this resort/spa. To my surprise I wasn’t getting the numbers of women that I thought I would, and even at the end some last minute cancellations pushed my worry buttons. But because I had just written about “good luck bad luck who knows?” I had to surrender and keep that as my mantra. I had to laugh because recently I had said that my favorite part of retreats is the intimacy and depth that is created with a small group and how challenging that can be with larger numbers of women. I guess the Universe was listening because who showed up at my retreat were nine amazing, deep, fun, connected women. They demonstrated to me the power of what a smaller group can feel like and a brand new way of looking at the different possibilities around doing my own retreats. I also realized that when I looked at the pictures of the retreat it looked pretty but what those pictures didn’t show was the warmth of the staff, the incredible care in all the details that made it special (fire pits at night, comfy luxurious beds, pampering spa) and incredible food that made my group swoon every time we ate!

 

So once again I learn the lesson of surrender and how we never know with every experience what it will bring – but to just keep showing up, and letting it be revealed. (And I just rebooked Alderbrook for May 2019. We’ll let you know when we open registration as this will be another very small, intimate group.)