Guy Time

Being straight and all, I think that girls are pretty awesome. More awesome than sports, TV, video games or anime…well, maybe not anime (kidding!!). Anyway, the world would be a far more boring place without girls (and far less populated too). But despite the fact that by nature they are breath taking, it’s not all the time that you want to hang out with girls and be with them. Sometimes, you just feel like taking a break from all the awesomeness and spend some time with the members of your own species. To just hang out with some guys.

Now going to an all boys high school for 5 years of your life doesn’t really count as guy time. No, that falls under its own special category, but that’s an entire other blog post and a half. The guy time I am referring to is the men’s retreat that I was at over the weekend. It was hosted by a local church from Kelly, and myself  and three other guys from my church decided to attend. In all there were about sixty guys of various ages from all over the country. There were also five visitors from Atlanta, Georgia, who were the main guest speakers for the event.

At first I didn’t really want to go. I had lots of stuff to do, I was feeling pretty tired from the last week and I was wondering what could possibly be fun about spending a weekend with just guys. But I had already paid my money so I decided to go anyway. When I got there, the first thing that hit me was how liberating it felt. The resort site was a Victory Heights which is way up in the hills behind Arouca. The air is clean and the nature is untouched. There’s miles of woods all around it. It’s one of those landscapes you could just sit and stare at for hours. We got there late in the afternoon and soon after we got settled in our rooms, they served dinner, which was cooked right there, by the guys. It was cooking that could put most girls to shame.

The real interesting part though came when the meeting sessions started. Being a church retreat, all the sessions were about living separated lives as Christians. Seeing as how this isn’t a religious blog and many people won’t understand the theological terms I may use, I’d just say that it was life-changing. But the part I really wanted to tell you about is the life stories of the American visitors. Each of them came up and told us about their lives before they became Christians. One guy had a pretty regular life. Another’s life story read like a Hollywood movie script, with the New York mob and the FBI and everything. Each of the five had very different story from the others, but they all ended up in the same place. No one was so different that they couldn’t find acceptance. As guys, we sometimes feel that the “lone ranger” mentality is cool, but what I found out is that it's stupid. All of us fall down from time to time, and we need someone to pick us up. And what better person to have help you up but a fellow brother. There are some things that girls would never understand, but other guys would. We always accept each other.

There was lots of other stuff at the retreat that I can’t explain all of right now because then this post would be three times its length. But I was really happy that I could spend some time with just guys alone, and understand a little better what it is to be a man.

Until tomorrow guys!! Bye!!