I know Valentine’s Day is long gone, but I’ve been wanting to tell you more about our trip to the widows’ home during our retreat with my college girls a few weeks ago. So, throw on something red and grab some conversation hearts ’cause we’re going to pretend like this post isn’t over a month late.

As I’ve told you before, we do no “work” on our once-a-semester retreats; instead it’s all about God and fun, especially in that order. When I started planning this last retreat and discovered that we would arrive in Pigeon Forge a couple of hours before we could check into our hotel, I knew it was the perfect opportunity for us to go by the Widows Ministry Center in nearby Sevierville, TN.

I’ll be honest with you: I’ve never really spent time with widows before but, after hearing what the Bible has to say about them, I realized a few months ago that I needed to make it a priority to do whatever my small part is in caring for them. I’m still not sure how God will fulfill that particular mandate in my life, but I knew a trip to see what they’re actually doing at the ministry center would be a good way to start. And, just ’cause they’re so sweet, I knew my college girls would want to come along.

Since it was so close to Valentine’s Day, we started off the morning by grabbing breakfast at Hardee’s (it’s a southern thing, y’all) and making valentines for each of the home’s residents. Here’s Ashley demonstrating one of our lovely creations:

Cousin Cate, another chaperone on our trip (I never thought I’d use the words “Cate” and “chaperone” in the same sentence), was so proud of her card that featured little “windows”:

I can’t remember which of our girls made this next one, but that’s some good handwriting:

It took us almost an hour to get them finished, but just look at the fruits of our labor:

Once we got to the home, we split into teams to tackle all three floors of the home (there are 41 apartments with each widow having her own apartment within the actual home). My team took the first floor and let me just tell you: we were so excited about knocking on doors and presenting those silly valentines that we could hardly stand it.

At one point in our visit, one of the center’s employees mentioned that they were having a group lunch at noon and wondered if we might want to stop by to say hello to all the residents at once. We said a big “yes!” before she could even finish her sentence and then, in an act I still can’t explain to this day, I randomly offered us up as the musical entertainment for said luncheon.

The only problem, of course, being that only a handful of us can actually, you know, sing.

As soon as we finished handing out the valentines, we got our ba-donk-a-donks to the chapel upstairs where we proceeded to quickly pick a medley of songs (some hymns and some modern day worship songs, too) and attempt to all learn the words in a span of, oh, about eight minutes. We then presented our “performance” to the crowd of women who, thankfully, acted like it was the best singing they’d ever heard.

Somehow I can’t help but think they may have been sparing our feelings, but we’ll take it.

As we got ready to leave, our group stopped in the lobby where we spent some time praying for the women while they continued to eat lunch upstairs. I found a spot in the corner to get down on my knees to beg God to provide for these women emotionally, spiritually and physically. The love between a husband and wife is an important theme in my life, so the plight of widows is something close to my heart. As I said earlier, I’m not sure how God wants to use me to bless them but I’m looking forward to finding out as He keeps working in me.

Of course, several of my college girls were begging me to invite the widows to join us at our hotel’s water park, an idea I was forced to shut down immediately much to their dismay. Call me crazy, but I just have a hard time imagining 41 elderly widows enjoying themselves here:

Though I’m quite sure they would have definitely enjoyed seeing Pookie’s choice of pajamas later that evening:

Yep, that’s one of my college girls wearing footie pajamas in my hotel room at 1 a.m.

In other words, just a regular day at the office for me.