Numb
It was a retreat, with ample time for solitary reflection, and not a camp, with a speaker doing most of the talking. The idea was for you to connect with God and hear for yourself, not be told stuff by someone else.
Well, I was in no mood to do much reflection. What with the sessions with my counselor and my writing on this blog, there's been tons of introspection going on. What's the point? After a while, I just end up going round in circles.
Plus, introspection to me means confronting pain and I didn't have the energy for that. Like I said, I was unaccountably exhausted throughout the four days of the retreat. So I sort of drifted through the whole thing... was there but not really there.
What did I go there for, then? you may ask. I was there as part of work, coz I was helping to organise the retreat and had to sort out room allocation for participants, collect their fees, and so on. In fact, the retreat was for people over 45 so I was the youngest there!
At the end of the retreat, each person was asked to write, "This retreat was a time of _______ for me" on a small piece of paper, then we took turns reading it out. Everybody else said it had been a time of refreshing for them, or a time of connecting with God, and stuff like that. I said it had been a time of numbness for me!
But after that as we were saying our goodbyes, the retreat director/facilitator (Koichi Ohtawa, former IFES associate general secretary) shook my hand and said that numbness is a blessing. He said that in numbness, one cannot do anything or feel anything, so one can just rest in the bosom of the Heavenly Father. I teared up.