220 men and women who made meals in advance and set out clothes in little piles, arranged rides to practices, said goodbye to children (pulled them off their legs in some cases), set aside life for a weekend to come together, as a couple, as a community.

Voices together in worship filled the room.

Any ice that was there, any walls that we built to safeguard our hearts were broken down.

Truth with a capital T was shared–not truth about adoption though there was some talk about all that, but truth about who we are, what on Earth we are doing, and how to actually follow the One who called us in the first place.

Over only a few days, connections were made that only He could make. One woman sent me these words before we had even left the hotel:

There simply are no words. We haven’t brought our daughter home yet, so we didn’t even know if we belonged at this retreat. We could not have been more blessed….God reaffirmed our calling and reassured us in so many ways this weekend.

For the third time, we went home feeling like we literally saw God move.

What happened this past weekend–all the connections, all the laughs, all the conversations of encouragement, all the challenges to open up our eyes to the unseen, all the weary people who were able to be served a meal without needing to cut up someone’s food and sit by a cozy fireplace and talk to new and old friends–it was God ordained. Yeah, we get excited about it every year. And, as exhausting as it is for us to put on, we are filled with joy doing it and are blessed abundantly when we do. But, we don’t do it for that. We do it because this is what God has put before us and invited us to be a part of.

We do it because together we are called to it.