Retreat Yourself and Recharge Your Soul

 As I was sitting in prayer one Tuesday morning after spending the previous evening in Urgent Care, I began to wonder what God was trying to tell me. Here I was at home when I should have been attending a three-day meeting with personnel from different retreat centers. It only took me a few seconds to hear God’s message. “Slow down!” God was shouting in that quiet voice only God can use.

Sometimes God has to shove me into the backseat before I let God do the driving again. I’m the type of person who will keep going until my energy level runs low, hits bottom, and I run out of gas. That is what happened on that fateful Monday evening. It was only in prayer the next morning that I finally took stock of what I was doing to my physical, emotional, and spiritual self. God sent me on a detour to the nearest wayside to rest, to take care of my physical body.

Not only do we need to take care of our physical selves, but we also need to care for our spiritual selves. We can get so caught up with the busyness of everyday life that we forget about taking time for God. Are you taking time to listen for the voice of the Spirit? Are you spending quality time with God in prayer? Maybe it’s time for a spiritual checkup. Maybe it’s time for a retreat.

What is a retreat?

When we struggle to find time for God in prayer, a retreat can offer just the opportunity we need to reconnect with our Creator and to nourish our body and our spirit. It provides a time and place to get away from the hectic schedule of our daily lives and take refuge in our God. It offers time to relax, to melt into God’s loving arms, and to let God take over. During a retreat, our hunger for solitude and the silence where we hear God speak can be satisfied. It gives us a time just to be, a time to be still.