New Facility for Retreat

Well, tonight's meeting in preparation of the upcoming Rachel's Vineyard Retreat weekend was especially great. We were able to tour the new facility (recently opened on North Harvard in December). The rooms, facilities, chapel, everything are amazing. We are so blessed to have had several private donors believe in providing an updated and more functional facility for Catholic Charities.

Our retreat will benefit greatly from this new location. Just the bathrooms alone will be an upgrade!!! In fact, I want their bathrooms in my own home...who do I talk to about that??? LOL It's going to be wonderful. The kitchen is updated and provides everything we'll need to keep the comfort food rolling for our retreatants. It's glorious!

After tonight's meeting, I looking forward to the weekend even more so. We have several people signed up already, so things are moving ahead on schedule. The volunteers working the retreat are all experienced, so there won't be any bumps to figure out...well...nothing that we've planned for and done before...of course...there's always that thing that you deal with for the first time, right? That's ok, God will help us through it all...He always does.

Being able to do this...to help people walk through their pain is a deeply personal and amazing gift God has allowed me to give. It is only because of my own pain and past experience that I am able to be there in such a capacity. For that, I am thankful to God. Would I rather have made the right choice all those years ago? Of course! However, I didn't and I've faced that. The best thing I can do now is to use that trauma to help benefit someone else's life....to not allow it to rule over me, but rather, take it and turn it into something that helps another find the light in their own lives.

Isn't it unreal at times what God manages to do with something that seems so horrible, so terrible that you think no good could ever possibly come from it? That's how powerful our Lord, God is and that's why we should always listen to Him. Even in our darkest moments and saddest times, He has the strength to carry us through it all.