Women at Their Best — God’s Intentional Ladies of Love

2022 Mountain Vineyard Retreat

Women are not always sugar and spice and everything nice. If you disagree, just watch one of the infamous housewife shows. Yes, they’re staged performances, yet sadly familiar in real life. If we’re honest, which one of us has never been catty, petty or unkind for a moment or a season? Maybe, a long season. I know I have not always represented women at their best.

This is on my mind because I recently attended a women’s retreat with 130 ladies sharing space, food and chatter time at the Mountain Vineyard Christian Church in Kent, Washington. Twenty-somethings mixing with seventy-somethings and all the betweeners. A mix of dewy skin amongst crow footed eyes and etched out laugh lines, a perfect fit for the retreat’s theme, “Seasons.”

While many were new found friends, some of the women had known each other for decades. Standing together through seasons of newness like motherhood, marriage, careers, spiritual awakenings. Weeping side by side through storms of loss like fading youth, divorce, death. So many prayers for strength and endurance through downpours we did not sign up for, like the day you become your parent’s caretaker or a serious illness strikes your child.

The level of love and caring shown for and by all the women at this retreat and their willingness to walk it out is…