You know how I go on and on about how awesome orphan care conferences are because you’re gathered with a bunch of people who love the same thing you do?

Well She Speaks was the exact same thing, except I got to be with 650 women who love to write, speak and minister to women. It was amazing!

We got to hear from some amazing speakers like Lysa TerKeurst, Renee Swope, Micca Campbell and Ann Voskamp (Yes, the Ann Voskamp that wrote “One Thousand Gifts”.)  I’ll have to unpack those later when I have a chance to type up some of my notes.

But there were 11 beautiful, amazing women that conquered their fears and joined me in a speaker evaluation group. We each had to prepare a 3-minute talk that was “our story” and a 5-minute scriptural teaching talk.

Friday night we gathered in one of the hotel rooms and one-by-one we shared our stories. They were beautiful stories, heartbreaking stories, happy stories. We had women who had lost children, women who had gone through divorce, breast cancer survivors and one still undergoing treatment. Women overcoming abusive backgrounds and ministering to other women. Women dealing with the heartbreak of ministry betrayal. We had award-winning authors, bloggers, mom’s and wives.

After each talk we filled out an evaluation form (as did our “official evaluator” Melissa from P31) for the speaker. They were such an encouraging and helpful bunch of women.

What struck me as I sat in the large room where we had our keynotes and meals was that there are sooo many stories waiting to be told. And most of us have more than one story. More than one struggle we can share. More than one piece of encouragement we can pass on.

I came back changed, inspired and encouraged in lots of ways that will take some time to process, but I promise to do some of it here 🙂