Chesapeake parish event welcomes those who’ve been away from Church
It was an evening of friendship, faith and renewal. A time to shine a little pink party light in the darkness.
The Walking with Purpose women’s Bible study of St. Stephen, Martyr, Chesapeake, invited the women of Hampton Roads to come together Friday, Feb. 25, for an event featuring Laura Phelps, author of “Victorious Secret: Everyday Battles and How to Win Them.”
“We wanted to give the gathering an air of a ‘girls’ night out,’” ministry co-coordinator Ann Emsley said, explaining how the team worked to give the parish commons a festive flair, with balloons, flowers and dessert trays with which to greet the crowd of 450.
“Over the past few years, many have taken a step away from the Church,” Brooke Fitzharris, ministry co-coordinator said, “and may or may not be coming back. So we asked, ‘What can we do that would make them feel welcome? That would appeal to that sense of, ‘This is something that would be fun to do with a friend’?”
Warm welcome home
The St. Stephen ministry chose to invite Phelps, a speaker, author and Connecticut mother of four, because of her inspirational message of finding hope and even humor amid life’s daily struggles.
“We always think that we live in this vortex where there’s only joy or only sorrow,” Fitzharris said. “But they can happen concurrently. You can walk the path, holding the hand of both of them.”
Emsley cast the net wide, she said, searching the websites of churches and parochial schools for email addresses, sending, in the end, a flyer along with a personalized message to 987 people.
“It was important to us to open it up, so that people who have been away would feel welcome,” she said.
The group was happily overwhelmed by the response, with hundreds of women across Hampton Roads and beyond registering for the event.
The principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School, Newport News, Dominican Sister Anna Joseph, offered to buy tickets for her teachers, about 15 of whom got together for dinner and to attend the talk.
“I haven’t done anything like this for a while,” OLMC teacher Brittany May said. “I was interested to see what encouragement we could draw from it.”
Message of resilience
“Does anyone remember Red Rover?” Phelps asked, as she addressed the assembly, recalling the childhood game in which two teams hold hands to form two chains.
The object? To run at the opposing team’s arms so hard that you break through their linked hands.
“It’s a terrible game,” Phelps said, amid laughter. “We all knew how to win. You go for the smallest, skinniest girl on the other team.”
But, Phelps said, there was also another path to victory: to aim at the girl who was afraid, who would let go of the hand in hers.
“How would I know this?” she asked. “Because I was the girl who was afraid.”
“I almost threw away everything I love because I didn’t realize I was in a spiritual battle,” she said.
The devil is not, as is often depicted in the popular imagination, prancing around with a pitchfork, she said. Rather, he is standing on the opposite line of a game of Red Rover, looking for the weak link in the chain — for the moment “we might feel unseen, unloved. For that moment when we feel we deserve better.”
“How do you fight your battles?” she asked. “Do you let go? Or are you the girl who stands firm?”
What is your battle?
Every battle is different, Phelps said. In a gathering of hundreds of women, there are hundreds of stories — of victories and defeats. Finding your own battle means staying vigilant, looking for what is trying to separate you from Christ, Phelps said.
Hopelessness. Dissatisfaction. A resigned sense of “it is what it is.”
Phelps recounted how her crisis came during a time of financial struggle and marital stress.
“My life looked nothing like I imagined it would, and I became increasingly aware of a sense of disappointment. And disappointment has a weight to it.”
She found herself looking more and more to social media for consolation and approval — a temptation common today — living in a digital dream world rather than facing her battles, fully inhabiting her own life.
But, even at our lowest ebbs, she said, “Christ never lets go of our hands.”
Strength in God’s Word
Phelps has found strength in studying Scripture, she said, and she encourages other women to do the same.
God’s Word has helped her, in the spirit of Ephesians 6, to put on the full armor of God, she said — the belt of truth, the shield of faith, and shoes eager to spread the gospel of peace. To follow the call to, “having done everything else, to stand.”
“Do you ever feel like that?” Phelps asked. “‘I don’t know what to do; I’ve tried everything!’ Well. Now you know. Put on your sandals of peace and stay put.”
We are called to stand firm in Christian hope, she said, in the joyful expectation that God’s promises will be fulfilled.
“No matter how my story ends,” she said, “I no longer see my battles as problems.”
Each everyday battle is an opportunity to grow strong in faith, to hold tighter to the hand in ours. Because the story is in the stand.
“I just imagine that Jesus is placing one more piece of metal on me. That he is saying, ‘This is my daughter. She’s mine,’” Phelps said. “‘And this is one more piece of armor that will make her strong.’”