The Day After My #inRL {in}Courage Meetup

Yesterday was such a fun and surprising day for me. I chose to host a meetup for (in)RL and opened the doors of my home to whosoever would register to join in.

Allow me to back up a bit for a minute, though.

Do you remember when I shared with you the word I felt challenged with this year? Yes, "engage", that's the one. Right after that, I stumbled upon a blog with something about a conference on the sidebar and decided to give it a click. From that click, I learned about (in)Courage and the un-conference they were putting together. The catch was, if you couldn't find a meetup in your area, you were encouraged to host it.

Lo and behold, there were no local meetup hosts in my area.

Umm....I think I'm supposed to do this. *gasp* I think I'm supposed to do this!

So I signed up to host. No biggie, right? No one will even come...

The day I signed on to the hosting website to cancel my host listing {due to all sorts of excuses I had come up with}, I saw that people were coming...people I didn't even know were coming.

Oh, dear. Now I have to host this.

I took it as a sign and decided to get excited about it and give these ladies my best effort at hosting. I know I sure wanted to enjoy the conference and I was positive they would feel the same way. I went out and bought a couple gift items, a few things for "beach house" decor {that was the theme of the conference}, some snacks, and a hook-up from my laptop to my television and put my energy into putting everything together.

Then yesterday arrived and so did my guests.

And wow. Just, wow.

God brought someone who reminded me of a close friend my mom had {who now lives out of state} but she also reminded me of a dear friend I have {who lives out of state}. And here she was, with the sweetest presence about her and I was so happy she was in my home. Then, God brought someone else from right up the road who has an awful lot in common with me. I felt a sense of peace with her here and a bit of relief, truth be told {she's going to begin homeschooling her son this fall, too.} My mom was the final person to show up but the 4 of us certainly had a wonderful time together.

As we watched the videos together and had our discussions, we learned about each other as we also learned about ourselves. It was a special and sweet time and we're already talking about when we can get together next!

My friends, if you ever feel prompted to do something like I did, just do it. Don't second guess yourself. Don't doubt yourself. Just do what you know you're supposed to do and in your obedience you will find blessing.

I can't believe I almost missed out on meeting 2 extraordinary women...