A Day Retreat with Tricia Lott Williford

Seasons of the Heart

Saturday April 5, 2014
9:00-2:00
Mt Olive Lutheran Church in Aurora, CO

I hope you can join me and so many of my favorite girls for a day retreat to talk about the seasons of our lives, what is fruitful in each season, and how we can care for ourselves in the bitter cold of depression as well as the new growth of springtime.

Here’s a Sneak Peek…

There have been seasons in my life of pure joy. Laughter, abundance, health, work I loved, happiness. I stretched my arms wide to capture it all. It didn’t last. No season does.

And it’s a good thing, because I have also experienced seasons that were so dark with despair, getting out of bed was an act of holy defiance. When my life was shattered, my heart was broken, and I shut myself inside my home and inside my mind to stay safe from even a ray of sunshine. Although they seem horrendously long, these seasons don’t last either.

There are seasons in between, which most of us experience for most of our lives – long, uninterrupted ordinariness. Work we don’t love or hate, Health that is neither great nor poor, we’re neither hospitalized nor running marathons, Circumstances that have their challenges, disappointments, surprises, graces, serendipities, but little bitterness or ecstasy. The spectrum leans neither good nor bad, but quite blessedly – or boringly − in the middle.

It’s foolish to plant corn in January. It’s foolish to transplant shrubs in July. Each season has its suitable tasks, its required duties, its necessary constraints. There are things that can happen in each season, and they cannot happen as fruitfully any other time. In the same way, there are things that cannot happen in each season, and it’s futile to try.

This is true in the earth’s cycles and seasons, but it is also true in relation to my own heart. The death of my husband, and the two years surrounding it, plunged me into a winter so deep and so long. I had no choice but to enter it, dwell in it, and learn from it. And maybe, just maybe grow from it.

Join me on Saturday, April 5, as I will teach a day-retreat on the Seasons of the Heart. We will dive into your winter of loss, your springtime of growth, your summer of happiness, and your autumn of abundance. Just as they are true on the calendar, they are true in the seasons of our lives.

It’s not too late to sign up, but spots are filling up fast! Please join us!