SOZO Sacramento September 22ndish

Krissi (pictured above with me), her husband Tommy invited me on a little adventure to Sacramento for a retreat... of sorts. I didn't know if I could go but after a little convincing I was on board. One round trip ticket to a ride in a packed explorer 12 hours there and back for a quick weekend. I'm in!

At first I thought it was just going to be K, T, and I but, when the car pulled up to pick me up early Friday morning, I realized every seat was taken. 5 people, 5 seats, 12(or so) hours. That's ok. I was down. Reminded me of that time we drove with a packed car 7 hours just to get hawk some Waffle House in Fort Collins. Good times! I hoped this would be just as good.

The drive was amazing. It brought back lovely memories of when T and I did it for our 2 year anniversary trip to San Francisco in the spring. We went the exact same way and took the exact same way back, the long way around Lake Tahoe. mmm.
The other two people in the car were Grace and Connie. It was Connie's car and she did most of the driving (thanks Connie!). They both turned out to be SUPER COOL and I'm so glad they were along on the trip! Connie, Grace, Me, Tommy, Krissi
Once we got to Sacrament we checked into a hotel and headed over for registration at this church that looked like a futuristic moon building or... like a giant gold armadillo. lol


The whole weekend was for this seminar, of sorts, that dealt with SOZOing. SOZO means to save, heal, preserve, and make whole in Greek. In short, the whole seminar was about forgiveness and how to help people into forgiveness. What I got out of it was a real revelation. I never realized how unforgiving I've been in the past 2 or 3 years. Technically, ever since the brake up I went though with the guy I dated for most of my college career, I've become a total bitch. Well not TOTALLY but I got sick not too long after that and forgiveness was not on my forefront of thought. I wasn't even thinking of it at all. It wasn't like I was CHOOSING not to forgive, it's just like I forgot about that all together.

The SOZO seminar helped remind me that, without our willing act of forgiveness, we are unable to partner in Love with the Lord. By being unforgiving we are imprisioning ourselves. It's crazy. I never thought of it like that. Like I am seperating myself from God's love with the more grudges that I hold. Crazy. So after I got back and processed the whole weekend I started really talking to God and forgiving the people He brought to my mind. A few specifically and probably more to come. It was amazing because I released them to him and blessed them and forgave them and it actually worked. Not just kinda like "ok i feel better" but I saw two of them that same day and I didn't get the usual choked up feeling or ANYTHING for that matter. It didn't bother me. I didn't think about them once for the rest of the day and it just wasn't a thing. During the process I asked God to replace the grudge I had, or whatever, with something good from Him and he did! For example, for one of the people I forgave He replaced my grudge with Joy and I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, what a great retreat but I'd be lieing if I said it was a breeze. It was hard to take it all in at once but once we got back and I went through my own personal SOZO and then one with Connie and Grace, it was amazing to see the Lord move and work. AWESOME!




So on the way home we stayed with a family friend of Tommy's. Or his family or something. He lived in the biggest house I've ever been in AND they had like miles of land for horses and all sorts of cool stuff. It was amazing. His little daughter's room was bigger than my entire apartment... and it was pink. lol
We headed back Sunday and made it home by the evening. Good times.
Thanks Krissi and Tommy, Connie and Grace! I'll never forget the SOZO trip to Sacramento!
We could be closer than you know,