I just finished a three-day women’s retreat at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. About 175 women drove from Fellowship Church in Knoxville, about an hour and half away, to beautiful Lake Junaluska, which is a giant United Methodist Retreat Center of a bunch of different hotels, inns, cottages, and different buildings all around the beautiful lake. These women were ready to have some fun and we sure did.
We had a fantastic Friday night session and we talked about the first three subjects in my book, ‘For Women Only’, about how men need respect, how men secretly often feel a bit insecure and need affirmation, and about how guys feel a real compulsion to be the provider for the family. It was great to see the women be willing to change their minds in areas if they had any areas that need to be changed.
The next day, at least half a dozen women stopped me and said that they had been very skeptical, that they called their husbands when they got back to their rooms last night and said, ‘here’s what this lady said, is it true?’ and all of their husbands said, ‘yes, that is true honey’, and they were just blown away. I thought that was pretty funny.
Saturday was a really interesting day, because I worked a little bit in the morning instead of going to the breakout session. Then in the afternoon I was getting a little bit of cabin fever, so I decided to go into Asheville with some of the other ladies who were going to go in and go antiquing and go look at the little flea markets, and have lunch. So, these two women who had been assigned to sort of chaperone me around, Megan and Kristen, took me into Asheville and we had lunch together, and then went window shopping 
and just had a really fun afternoon. I was thinking a lot this weekend that it’s interesting that the name of the church that had invited me was Fellowship Church, because it really was a weekend of fellowship, and that’s something that I miss so much when I am on the road. I have great friends in Atlanta and elsewhere, but I have to give up a lot of time with them because I’m on the road so much. It was really nice to get to know these women a little bit; who I could see myself being such good friends with if we lived in the same area.
Anyway it was a fun afternoon, and I got some good finds too in the little Asheville stores, so as any woman knows, that was a successful afternoon. The Saturday evening session was a little more intense, it was the last four subjects in the book, including talking about sex, about men’s visual nature, and that men desire romance as much as we women do. And then finally - the major hot-button — talking about how important it is today that men see their wives being willing to make an effort to take care of themselves for them. And as you can imagine that last one is a hard one for a lot of women to hear. It was certainly hard for me to hear when I first learned this. And it’s very hard to talk about, because it can be hurtful to think (mistakenly) that our husband may not love us just the way we are. We think, ‘oh my goodness, with everything I have on my plate, I can’t handle one more thing that I am supposed to do’.
It was an intense session but it was very good, because as hard as it was to hear, I think the women really understood what I was saying, and what I was not saying. And we had a good question and answer session the next day that allowed us to clarify some of the things about how guys do love their wives just the way they are, but it really makes them feel cared for, when their wives are willing to take care of themselves. So it was a really intense session, but I must have had at least 50 women come up to me after that session and say, ‘thank you, I really needed to hear that’.
So after the question and answer session on Sunday, I drove back to Atlanta with my husband and kids, who had come up just for a quick visit and stayed overnight with me in the conference center. It’s always fun when I don’t have to miss my family for several days - and I was grateful that my family came to me!