This past weekend, I attended a Christian women's retreat. It was hosted in a beautiful country setting that reflected God's peace. Although it was organized by a certain denomination, I was impressed that women of all Christian denominations were welcome. To me this was an example of God's love to all of us who are sisters in Christ. The weekend was a time of reflection, sharing the goodness and faithfulness of God, encouragement and fun. I was blessed.
On the way home, I remembered another time that I had experienced a kind of supernatural sisterhood. At the time, our youngest daughter was a young teen. I was friends with a woman and her daughter. The daughter decided to open her home for craft nights, (I can't remember how often, but it was on a regular basis), for whoever wanted to come. All ages were welcome.
There ended up being three generations of women doing a variety of crafts together: My generation (women in their 50s), my friend's daughter's generation (women in their 30s) and my daughter's generation (teens). The space was relatively small, but God made a way for all of us to fit together. We had so much fun making the crafts.
Being an only girl with three brothers in my family, this was my first exposure to this type of sisterhood. The feeling that really struck me was the encouragement that each woman gave to the other. It was amazing having women of different generations encouraging and lifting each other up. To hear an older woman praising the work of a teenager or a teenager impressed by the handiwork of someone older than she, was incredible.
Even though this happened over twenty years ago, the sense of how powerful loving, Christian sisterhood can be, has stayed with me. In my own life, especially during this most recent season of grieving, the prayers, encouragement and friendship extended to me by my daughters and women friends has been invaluable. Each one has thrown me a life-line of hope in each of their unique ways.
I wrote this post to bring to your awareness the power of positive women friends that we invite into our lives. Women have so many shared experiences as well as experiences in common. that it is easy to relate to one another in empathy and understanding. We can also be very influential in the life of another woman or female of any age. We can be the encourager, the listening ear, the prayer warrior, the life-line thrower for the women in our lives. I hope that we will all look for more opportunities to do so.
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