Women's Silent Retreat

Every year I strive to go on one weekend retreat.  This year I attended a silent women’s retreat at the Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra.  The retreat is an annual parish event, our deacon’s wife usually organizes it as an opportunity for women from our parish to get away together to nourish our faith and form community.  On this occasion I was able to join my parish group for my first time and the experience was so lovely.  The grounds at the retreat home are like a small glimpse of heaven.  It’s a Carmelite home, so I got to learn a bit more about Carmelite spirituality.  When I arrived on Friday, during the orientation one of the sisters shared that Carmel means “hidden garden of God” thus their grounds have many gardens to help us find our “soul” garden.  I found this explanation really beautiful and meaningful.  It’s no secret that I love nature so to find and create a garden inside me where God remains, takes root and grows makes a lot of sense.  It’s a spiritual concept that I hope I can continue to develop.  During the weekend, our retreat master was famous EWTN Father Brian Mullady, he spoke about God’s Mercy, our need for humility and the beauty of silence.

Sometimes silence for people with mental disabilities can be quite a challenge.  I know that during specific times in my life I have difficulty calming my thoughts and it’s so easy to get pulled into the chaos of my bipolarness.  And for the past week or so I had been a little emotionally unbalanced so I was a little worried that the silence would have negative effects.  Yet, when we began our silence sister explained that our silence was to reflect a pregnant silence filled with the presence of God- to be quiet enough so that we could hear God’s whisper.  Again, this made a lot of sense because sometimes in quiet time I tend to overthink things so much that I create problems that were never there to begin with.  This silence meant to focus on God, I know that this is very basic theology, but sometimes I need to be pointed back to basics.  So, during the silent weekend I focused on God and being present in the moment.  The retreat house has various gardens with different saint sculptures in each and during my entire stay I felt like I was surrounded by my friends and great examples of sanctity.  I listened to the talks, to classic & religious music, to the lovely sounds of nature and saw God’s glory and my soul was full of gratitude.

I like to doodle my thoughts and experiences on retreat!

Hanging out in Saint Francis' Garden.

When I am disturbed it usually points to something wrong in me so I need to have the humility to own up to it.  This means to not respond to the feelings, but to put them to prayer and to try to find a solution calmly.  I really need to work on this because every time I have a problem I want to be quick to discuss and fix it, but sometimes I need to wait and calmly react.  During the retreat a lot of areas that I need to work on were revealed and it's humbling how much I need God's grace.  But I was really thankful that at least I am able to recognize how imperfect I am (LOL).

Isn’t it great to know that man cannot exist without love, God’s love and that this love must be carried to others wherever we go.  That we must look at everything and everyone with eternity in mind. And that His mercy gravitates towards our woundness, brokenness, sinfulness and it’s not repelled by our darkness; but, if we are open we become a new creation…  He desires to be near us and when we allow Him to be close we receive His mercy and then are able to radiate it towards others.  His mercy transforms us!  I don’t know about you, but God knows that I truly need to be changed into a better image of myself, one that closer resembles Him.

Retreats are awesome, I encourage you to make it a gift to yourself and go at least once a year.  There’s different types so every experience will always be so special.