Gilgal Stones
After miraculously crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, the Israelites took 12 stones out of the Jordan to create a memorial marking what God had done among His people. The stones served as a reminder of what they had to leave behind in order to go with God: each stone, a symbol of their past burdens but also a remembrance of God’s transformative power.
Women in our “Hope and Healing Workshops” learn to confront the effects of trauma on their lives and identify paths toward resilience, change, and growth. Each woman has a metaphorical backpack she carries that contains the trauma and adverse experiences from her past. We help her open that backpack to understand what she has been carrying and what needs to be released. Our goal with these workshops is to point women toward God’s healing grace and truth.
One of our activities early on is to have each woman choose a rock, and on her rock, she creatively places her burdens, whether that is painting symbols or writing words that capture her shame. She then lays down her rock -- a tangible reminder of her wounds -- in RETA’s landscaping around our tree of life. For so many of our clients, their wounds become their identity, an identity based upon lies.
When cohort #1 recently graduated from this nine-week course, they once again took up their rocks. This time, however, they flipped them over and painted a revision describing themselves as God sees them – their true identity. Shame was replaced by redemption; guilt, forgiveness; despair, hope. And one last time, they placed their rocks around RETA’s tree of life where they will remain as a memorial to God’s transformational love.