AE Love.

June 20-22.Good grace that retreat was the best weekend of my life. I think that the most beautiful thing that I learned was that God loves me. I mean, it's true that I've known that fact ever since I was born,practically. But the retreat really made me feel it. In fact, in realizing that God loves me, I learned one of the greatest things that there is to know in the universe. God loves me so much that he had people like those from AE come into my life. People that loved me, without having to get to know me. Just me being a person was enough for them. In all my years of going to a Catholic school, I had never felt God more in my life than at that retreat. Truthfully,I never wanted to leave it.

I don't understand why the entire world couldn't be like that small room we all spent three days in. Why can't people just love one another without having to consider flaws? In that room, I really felt like everyone was family. In fact, I felt more at home with my AE family than I sometimes did with my own family. And things felt so out of place whenever I went home,I missed AE so much.
Most importantly,though, AE was life changing. AE helped me want to grow. All this time I had been the type of person that was afraid to meet new people and had a hard time over coming her shyness to make new friends.

Not a day goes by in which I'm not reminded of what happened to me on that retreat. It's so amazing, that I can't even begin to put it into words. Perhaps the most important thing that it has helped me to be is less shy and to become more confident. I find myself planning to do things that once intimidated me. And, I've found myself in situations that I wouldn't have considered before, since if I though twice about them, I wouldn't have gone through with it. I'm the type who analyzes everything and never jumps ahead. Consequently, most of my whims are never carried out, since I think at least three times before acting upon anything. AE helped me learn to live a little and jump in headfirst sometimes.

When people talk about something amazing, it might be some non-mediocre sort of experience. This retreat truly was amazing. That's exactly what it was, an amazing encounter.
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