Summary: <br> Yesterday morning I led the 12 women here for the BIG Life Goal Setting Retreat on a walk on the island. The sun was shining, the beach was practically all ours and we set our sights to the west and we started walking. We reached the tip of the island and turned around. And that’s when it hit us. This head wind so strong you had to lean into it.<br> When did this happen? We didn’t even notice the wind when it was at our back, but the moment we turned around and started in the direction of home, boom RESISTANCE.<br> What does resistance in life mean? What does it mean when we have to push so hard to make any progress at all, when going the other way seemed so much easier? It means we’re going home.<br> Home represents where we belong. Home represents who we were created to be and the life we were created for. It’s time to come back to it. And you need to know, the journey back will be a whole lot harder than the wandering off was.<br> Where have you wandered away from the woman you were created to be? The woman you truly are. That woman is happy and healthy. That woman is grounded and grateful. That woman is content and confident. Have you walked away from her?<br> Where have you wandered away from the life God created you for? That life is filled with purpose and passion and power. That life is fulfilling. That life is meaningful. That life is one you would want to wake up to today. Did you?<br> It’s time to turn around and head home. Come back to who you were created to be so you can live the life you were created for.<br> Jesus shows us exactly how through a story found in Luke 15: 11-32. The story of the Prodigal Son. You likely remember the story, but perhaps missed the most powerful sentence in it all.<br> “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.<br> “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.<br> “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.<br> What had been happening here is the son had been walking in the wrong direction. He had wandered away from home. And you better believe the way there was darn easy. It was easy to walk away with all that money and go have fun. It was easy to walk away from his responsibilities and live free and wild.<br> Just like it’s darn easy for us to walk away from who we were created to be and stumble into being a woman who is stressed, worried, unhealthy, and unbalanced. It’s easy because the wind is at our back and we just keep going and going and going.<br> There’s zero resistance going with the wind. And guess what, if we just go with the wind, we will often get ourselves in trouble. The boat we talked about yesterday will end up shipwrecked on some distant shore if we just go with the wind. And that’s where some of us are … shipwrecked. Waking up in a life we don’t love and a body we may not even recognize. We have become someone we were never created to be. And it was all so easy. It’s easy to get to this point.<br> It’s easy for the house to become a mess, right? You don’t even have to work at the mess, it just naturally piles up.
