Myself and a couple of women I love very dearly made plans a few months back to take some teenage girls from our church to a youth conference. We were in the midst of planning our retreat, and one of the women felt very strongly that we should do something to bless these young girls.
The Bible studies we are involved in are very family oriented. Not just in the fact that people bring their kids (though in one of them, that is the case), but we are all like one big happy (most of the time) family. These teenage girls will often times sacrifice other things they could be doing to take care of the little kids each week. They go the extra mile to be a blessing to so many of the mommas. So, my friend really felt strongly that we should plan a weekend centered around blessing these girls, doing something that was meant just for them, instead of trying to include them into our retreat.
And, I'm so glad she suggested that.
So, with four adults and seven teenage girls loaded up in two vehicles, we headed out to the conference on Friday. Not living nearby a Chick-fil-a, we were very excited to discover that one was on our way! Only one of us in the group had ever had it before, so we were very excited to try it.
(Chick-fil-a!)
It was fabulous! Chick-fil-a definitely did not disappoint. The food was amazing, the customer service was better than most sit down restaurants I've been to, and it totally hit the spot. My crazy, dear friend was trying to marry off one of her daughters to the guy behind the counter...that's how impressed we all were with this place. He said he went to the local Baptist church, and that was enough for her to decide he should marry her daughter. We had a lot of laughs over that for the rest of the weekend.
(Said boy is the one on the left trying to eat our food)
We then continued on, checked into our hotel, and then headed to the conference.
I had been to this particular conference many times when I was younger...either as a student or a youth leader. But, it had been seven years since I'd been, so I was a little anxious about what it was like now.
(Getting ready to go into the conference!)
The conference was really great. The worship was great, the bands were awesome, and most of the speakers were pretty good, too (one guy totally rubbed me the wrong way early on in his talk and I couldn't focus on anything else he said after that). But, most importantly, the girls seemed to get a lot out of this weekend, and that was more than we could ask for.
Someone suggested we should make matching shirts after we saw many groups there with the same bright colored shirts on. We took a trip after the session on Friday night to Walmart to buy the supplies to make our shirts...and spent the next couple of hours designing them and adding our artistic flair to them. Needless to say, not much sleep was to be had that night.
(In the elevator in our hotel, before shirt prep)
We woke up far too early the next morning to get to the conference. The only thing that I think is a big downfall to these kinds of things is how many sessions and concerts they cram into a day and a half. It started at 8am in the morning and wasn't over until 9:45pm on Saturday...that makes for a really long day. And, with only a couple of hours of sleep under our belts, it felt even longer. Granted, they give you a two hour break for lunch, another two hours for dinner, and a couple of fifteen minute breaks throughout the day...but it's still hard to concentrate that long. I think I definitely would have gotten much more out of it if they would have stretched everything over three days instead.
We had a lot of fun on our lunch break with a local youth group that set up big speakers and had people dancing in the middle of the parking lot. We all jumped into the circle at one point and suddenly everyone in the crowd was dancing with us.
The big thing they were pushing all weekend was how being normal is not enough. As Christians, we shouldn't be ok with looking like everyone else. We should be striving to look much different from the world...and be ok with that. In today's society with all the crazy things constantly coming at our teenagers, I think this message was so important for the girls to hear. In a world where "different" is looked down upon, and people are put into boxes or given labels for the way they dress or the things they do in their spare time, normal is sought after. Acceptance is what everyone longs for.
And, it really made me think about myself. How often am I striving to be like everyone else...whether it be the way I dress or the way I talk or the things I do with my life...instead of being the unique individual God created me to be?
(We called ourselves the Pink Ladies)
It's so easy to do what everyone else is. Different takes work. It's hard. And, many times, it brings us a lot of ridicule. But, Jesus was different and calls us to be different. How can we turn our backs on that?
I walked away from this weekend a little on the tired side, but really blessed. I have such a heart for these young women and I'm excited to see how God is going to continue to use me in their lives.
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