Women Of Faith and a Day With My 5 Year Old

This weekend I went to Women Of Faith. I'm sure you have all heard of it. I had an awesome weekend, however, the actual conference itself left me a bit disappointed.

I always like to start on a positive note, so...

The great parts:
A weekend with friends. Great food, great fellowship, shopping (I hit up Eddie Bauer and Gap outlets and made out like a bandit!), deep debates over religion well after midnight, and laughter. Lots of laughter. AND, none of that was at the conference!

The conference had it's good points too. Again, I laughed, and laughed , and... you get the picture. I heard some great stories, but really, that was about it.

The messages were VERY entertaining, but nothing I've not heard. There were no "wow, God is really speaking to me here" moments. I felt an undertone of , shall we say ... feminism. I guess a woman beating out her male co -workers to become the president of a bank, or a CEO of Mobil oil does NOT impress me, but I'm an old fashioned kind of girl.

I could overlook that, but there was one thing that really grated on me throughout the conference.

"Buy our books, if you buy 5 you get our discount, AND a free tote bag!" "If you adopt a child through World Vision AND use your credit card you can get this nifty shirt!" "Sign up now for your Women Of Faith credit card!" Yeah, that's in scripture. "Buy this CD". "Sign up for this other conference", etc, etc, etc.... The materialism was enough to make me want to barf! Between speakers they would put commercials on the big screen selling their "stuff". It was like the friggin' circus!

Did I walk away from Women of Faith with a few good nuggets? YES. It wasn't a bad experience, but I think my expectations were to high. I wanted great worship, and a fresh word. I didn't get that. Instead I got a sales pitch, and a message that I felt was tainted with a "world view" Javamama loves that word ( ;

I'm not against women working, I'm not against selling books at a conference, heck, I'm not even against credit cards used wisely. I guess I was just repulsed by the format they used.

Next year I'm going back, but I'm skipping the conference. My friends and I are going shopping, we are going to chow down on desserts, and stay up all night talking about shoes. We are going to find a church with great worship or go to a worship concert, then go back to the hotel, pull out our bibles and get our fresh word straight form the source. I'm going to hear testimonies from the "Women of Faith" in my very own hotel room. Then I'm going to write another post telling you all how great it was!

On a completely different note. My youngest son (he's 5) has decided he's a hardcore charismatic. At church today (keep in mind we are at a baptist church) he started to raise his hand (very cool... his rebel mama does the same thing despite the dirty looks she gets) Then both hands went up high, and he went into some odd goofy dance. At this point my husband and I were laughing pretty hard (probably the reason for the dance). Then he started laughing. Before we knew it the whole family was in hysterics (Toronto style) although I must admit it wasn't holy spirit induced. Finally an older gentleman looks at him and says "why are you so wild today?" His totally matter of a fact reply "'cause I've got rabies".

It was the best worship I've had at that church yet. Thank you God for my crazy children and husband who find humor in the driest moments!

On the way home my husband asked my children what they wanted for Christmas (I do NOT agree with Christmas talk before Thanksgiving, but too late, The "P" word (present) was mentioned and there is no going back now)... back to my story... my oldest daughter said "drums and a baby sister (boy is she out of luck this year) My second daughter said an Ipod (what do they think we are made of money or something?) and a baby sister. First born son "ipod, baby sister". I see a theme.

Now my five year old thinks for a moment. "I want a goatee, like daddy's, and some baby stickers." I give up.