Imagine!!!

October 1st and 2nd of this year - my mom and I along with many other women from our church and all over the country attended the Women of Faith Conference here in Phoenix. What a life changing and renewing weekend! It was so energizing to be among 10,000 women worshiping God!! How powerful is that!! The weekend was full of laughter, tears, and just an amazing sense that God was meeting us right there in the US Airways Center.


I had never been to a Women of Faith Conference before - I've been to tons of christian conferences before - ever since I was as young as Junior High I can remember going to them - but there is just something different with being with that many women - God has very high standards for women. He has created us to bare life and care for our families, to support and respect our husbands, and to be HIS beautiful daughters! It's just amazing how God really looks at us and how much He cares for each of us and how much He has entrusted to us. It's amazing! For so many years women have been put down and pushed to the back but God has called us to be so much more and uses us for great things that He values us so much and knows our needs and wants to be close to each of us. He's the only one that we could ever have a perfect relationship with.  He doesn't care what we have done in the past, He doesn't care what we look like, what job we have or how clean our house is he just cares about us and that He can be in our everyday life.

The praise and worship was amazing - Natalie Grant has to be one of my favorite singers - even being VERY pregnant her songs she performed were beyond awesome! I LOVE her song "Held" which she sang live and it just brought tears to my eyes.  Here's the song if you've never heard it!




The speakers were great and we learned a lot about not always wearing a "smile" and pretending to be happy when life gets hard. So many times we think we have to be strong and tell everyone we are okay even if we aren't. As Christians we feel like we always have to wear a smile and be HAPPY and perfect!  Be we learned about being able to let people know that something is wrong and if you're hurting and letting them carry some of that burden for us. God doesn't always call us to be strong and we can run to him when we need to ride out the storms in life but he's also provided other christian people out there to help us too - to be the tangible people when we need them. This has been really hard since we moved out to Phoenix - because we haven't made the friends out here like we have back in Ohio - it's been difficult for us. But in the last six months that has changed so much. We have finally found a church that we love - we joined a small group which is AMAZING - we love our small group and always look forward to seeing them and we have finally just started feeling like our friends out here are becoming our "family".  We finally found people out here that we can be real with and let in to help us carry those burdens in life that just get to heavy for us - and people that we can help carry their burdens too.  It's a good feeling when that happens.

Luci Swindoll has to be one of my favorite speakers from this weekend.  She is one funny lady if you have never heard her speak you're missing out! I think I could have listened to her talk the entire conference. She is a lady that is just on fire for God and has been called to give her entire life to Him. I would love to just sit and talk with her - she had the entire audience laughing so hard we had tears rolling down out cheeks! All of the speakers were great and really got their messages across in meaningful ways!

I learned a lot about strengths and weaknesses and that hit home so much with me.  The way I look at my kids - especially with Hunter as parents we focus so much to fixing out kid's "weaknesses" that we forget to focus on their "strengths" and letting them shine in what they are good at.Why do we do that?? I don't want any of our kids to ever be labeled for the weakness or feel like they're never good enough because they have a weakness it just made me realize what's really important to look at and work on. I want my kids to find those things that God has called them to do and just go after them - I don't want them to focus so much on fixing their weaknesses that they miss out on a chance of using their strengths!

All of the speakers had messages that hit home one way or another and I can't even begin to tell you all the ways God spoke to me that weekend. I can't wait for next year I'm excited. What's even more exciting is they have a conference for young girls now too - I can't wait till Triniti's old enough to go to it!!

I highly suggest if you ever get a chance to go to one of the conference GO - it's an amazing life changing event that you just won't be able to walk out of it the same person you went into it as.