Well, friends, this is a great place to start my blog. I joined 12 other female authors that have developed women’s Bible studies for Lifeway at the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention. We spent the day meeting interested women’s ministry leaders and explaining our studies – and that was fun and productive.
But for me, by far the most important time - one of my most special times of the year, in fact - was the evening spent with the other authors. The Lifeway staff reserved two tables for dinner in a beautiful courtyard restaurant at the hotel, just for us, and said, “We’re leaving now! We want you to have a chance to get to know each other!”
Many of us had met before, but as the newbie in the group it was the first time that I’d had a chance to spend any concentrated time with these women as friends. And - wow - what a special time that was! We realized very quickly that we could understand each other in a way that even close friends sometimes cannot. We’re all women who lead these crazy lives on the road, traveling in ministry we’re called to, but that often requires great sacrifices of time with other friends and family. Many of us have husbands and kids, and understand the stresses that come with the constant question, “Lord, am I being a good wife? A good mom?” It was so cool to feel a sense of kinship with these other women, to pray for each other, and also have some silly fun together (don’t expect me to tell you what we did! We swore each other to secrecy!) .
I snapped some pictures on my camera phone of our fun dinner, including my new friends, Vicki Courtney and Jennifer Rothschild, and another of Mary Kennedy, Angela Thomas, and Linda Anderson. You can see some others in the background. Each of their Bible Studies is powerful - take a look at the descriptions on the website www.lifeway.com to see which ones your church might be interested in.
We all had one giant girlfriends’ gabfest until near midnight and finally, but reluctantly, we realized that we all had early flights out in the morning. But even with sleepy eyes the next morning, we all compared notes and agreed that the late night was well worth it!