A Planning Retreat

Here at Positive Adoption we are working to build a blog that grows with us. As our own family tree grows, it is our desire that this blog reflect our changing lives and expanding interests.

We view our blog team as a house– a house with different rooms and different things to offer, different purposes that we serve.

The Retreat

The team met at Amerey’s house for lunch to launch the planning retreat, Audrey and her four children, Amerey and her two and me (Kathleen). Audrey and I spent the first fifteen minutes of our ‘meeting’ trying to put up a baby gate. Pretty sure we broke it.

We don’t follow the cultural norm and leave our kids at home when we travel. We bring the whole household.(tweet that) Later that evening after checking into our hotel suite, we packed the room with more family members and ate pizza before we took over the pool area. That’s just how we roll.

What does this have to do with the website?  It got me thinking about how amazing our household is. Even though most of my kids have moved out to begin their own lives, I say the words ‘family gathering’ and whomever can be there shows up. Crammed into a hotel room or splashing around in a tiny hotel pool. We are there. All talking at the same time. Smiling.  Debating. Sharing. Our norm is, if we are going the kids are too. It is a rare occasion when Mama goes somewhere alone, not non existent, just rare. Kids are people too and they learn and grow right alongside us adults.

Each of my family members brings something unique to the table, just as each one of the web family has a gift to bring to the site.

 And His gifts were [varied; He Himself appointed and gave men to us] some to be apostles (special messengers), some prophets (inspired preachers and expounders), some evangelists (preachers of the Gospel, traveling missionaries), some pastors (shepherds of His flock) and teachers.

¹² His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church),

¹³ [That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [^[a]full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him.- Ephesian 4: 11-13

Each of us on the web team have a unique perspective.  Each of us have varied gifts and experiences. We each represent a different room in a house and together we are a whole household.( You can read more about The Whole House team  here.)

We want to reassure you that we will continue to blog about the same issues that brought you here– adoption, high-functioning special needs, and education. Those things will still be here. But you will also be able to find blog posts that carry you with us through our day and our thoughts and our walk to be more like Jesus, as we are mothers and wives and homemakers and artists.

 We brainstormed while we ate, at the pool, over multiple cups of coffee, supervising crafts and while kids watched Octonauts or Baby Einstein. I just finished rereading You’re Made for a God-sized Dream by Holley Gerth which inspired this list of questions. Feel free to copy them for your own planning retreat!

Just a peek at some retreat ‘events’.

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