How many people in your life truly know you? How many people surround you that understand your hopes and dreams and know your biggest fears?

Do they know what you are passionate about? Do they know what your favorite food is? Do they know where you stand on important topics?

I have learned, through years of observing my friends and extended family members, that very few people actually know me. I am referring to the wholehearted knowledge of who I am inside, who I long to be, and every hope and thought in between.

Society seems to force us to hide some of the innermost workings that make each of us the unique child of God that we are. Women have never been “supposed” to be bold and outspoken. Songs like “Cry Pretty” by Carrie Underwood and “Mama’s Broken Heart” by Miranda Lambert have become hits about this very issue that women face: the pressure to hold it together in public.

Our passions and opinions are most often lost in the shuffle of daily life, our jobs, and all the other commitments we women constantly face.

It wasn’t until the first Christian women’s event that I attended when I began to realize that most women have so much in common. That first evening, I felt truly accepted and truly understood.

At every Christian women’s event I have ever been to, I have felt truly known. The speakers reveal that we are all broken. The prayers reveal that we are all hurting and lonely in some way. The live music acknowledges the sorrows of this life but also the hope that we share for tomorrow. The tears of those around me, and all around the room, reveal that we all need Jesus so much more than we may daily admit to ourselves and others.

The promises of our Savior that come across so strongly in those sacred weekends of reprieve, to a place where women are worshiping and learning and crying together, are so deeply needed by each of us!

With the Thrive Conference fast approaching, I want to remind you all of how freeing it feels to be in a room with hundreds of women who seem to know you.

The woman in front of you may know what deep disappointment your significant other’s choices have left you with. The woman across the aisle may know what it feels like to beat yourself up about choices you have made. The woman sobbing behind you may know the low level of self-worth you have been struggling with. The woman fixing her mascara in the restroom may know how difficult the health battle you are facing is. The woman who checks you in at the registration booth may know how deeply it hurts to have recently lost that dear loved one.

She may know how exhausting motherhood can be, and just how much you had to prepare to be able to attend this event.

She may know the financial struggles you had to overcome to get this weekend off work in order to make it to the conference.

Whatever it is that you are facing at this time, you can be certain that someone in that room of God-loving, praise-singing, strong-willed Christian women is facing or has faced it too. That dear woman is praying right alongside you and crying in the row behind you. She is visiting the prayer room after you and attending all of the breakout sessions about perseverance and keeping the faith, just like you.

The unmatchable power and prayer among all of those amazing women is humbling.

There is no other place I have felt so understood, so fought for, so lifted up, and so prayed over, than at a Christian women’s event. The acceptance and compassion felt in that room of women is unmatchable anywhere else in our daily lives. It is so important to feel that forgiving love and grace.
So come join us. Let us pray with you. Help us lift up one another. Feel the healing power of hundreds of women knowing you and praying with you.