The Great Escape

I spent this weekend at a women's retreat up in the middle of nowhere.
It was a special weekend because my friend Dayna came from North Dakota to speak at the retreat. She spoke on Psalm 23. She is a lovely woman with a heart that yearns for God and so her words were both inciting and beautiful.
On Sunday, when it was time to leave, I was feeling particularly relaxed. The retreat ended officially at 2pm but brunch was done by 12:30 so we were pretty much packed and ready to go by 1pm. I was driving my friends Julianna and Dayna home and we decided to take a quick jaunt to the waterfall before heading back. We let someone know we were leaving to walk, so no one would worry about an empty car, and we sprung joyfully away.

We look like three cute girls, but we are actually something of a Bermuda Triangle.

It was a mossy walk with the background music of water and the freshness of ferns. Truly good for the soul. When we got back to the main camp all the cars were gone. We jumped in my van and pulled out to the main road of the camp. As we got to the gate of the camp we were a little alarmed to find it locked. It was secured with a chain and padlock. Just a little setback, we hadn't been gone that long, surely someone was around. It's all fun and games until someone gets locked in the retreat center.

It was a little difficult for my husband to wrap his brain around that text.

It took us about 20 minutes to find that every building was locked and there was no.one.there.
As previously stated, we were in the middle of nowhere, so our options were limited. Julianna started to call people to try to get help, Dayna jumped the fence to find if anyone was home at the house we could see, and I rummaged the shed to find a pick-axe and a metal cable to try and break the lock. Julianna suggested calling 911 but I was pretty sure we'd end up in the news. Who gets locked in a retreat center?

Isn't Dayna cute? 

Thank God I didn't injure myself with that pick-ax!

Right about now I was wishing I'd watched Macgyver with the boys.

The neighbor couldn't/wouldn't help us. The less said about me wielding the pick-ax the better. I hooked the chain up to the bumper of the car with a tow rope and was in danger of taking out the whole gate so I stopped (but it was really fun while it lasted). Finally Julianna got a hold of a relative who lived only 45 minutes away and had a metal cutter (or something like that) and he agreed to come spring us from lock down.
We put our coats down in a green pasture in between two bodies of still water, where we could still see the gate, and we had a picnic.

Julianna and Dayna talked and I thought about where we were.
I had never been locked in anywhere before. Or had I?
My brother and sister were allowed to babysit me when I was very young and they, not much older. I was a naughty child and one method they had of watching me was of locking me in a cupboard. The panic I felt in that cupboard led me to become a claustrophobic adult.
The retreat center is large and lovely and even contains a waterfall, but it was still a prison that I couldn't get out of. All kinds of resources were there, food, drinks, beds, but they were also locked to us. It wasn't a cupboard that I was cramped into, but it was still a prison. Our prisons aren't always stifling, sometimes we don't even know we're in one; until we try to get out.

As we sat waiting, and I worked to fight my claustrophobic panic, I remembered God's faithfulness of getting me out of the prison of myself. Jesus was the key to the gate of my own life as I was trapped in the retreat center of my sin. He not only opened the gate and gave me glorious freedom, but he unlocked all the resources and allowed me to truly use them, to live well within myself. To welcome people in through the gate of Himself, that He opened, or to go out of myself and into the big wide world of lonely, lost people.
I am so grateful.

I'll never forget Julianna on the phone, "Hi! Are you at home? Do you happen to have a lock cutter?"
This is what family is for. 

And as a truck pulled into view and we gathered our picnic food, I was grateful again. Grateful for a way out. Grateful for freedom in Christ. Grateful for friends that come in and out of the gate with us. Grateful for the reminder that there are still many people locked in themselves and their sin, and searching for a key to get out, and I can help them, because I know Who the key is.
As we drove off into the big, wide world with the exhileration of freedom, I had to laugh.
God finds such creative ways to restore my soul.