Danielle Pelkey

Commentary

This past weekend, the ladies from my church went on an encounter to Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Not knowing how things may go since we were all going to be leaving our husbands and kids for four whole days, we were a little scared. OK, not everyone was scared, but this was the first time I had left my girls that long and I didn’t think I would be able to make it though it.

We left Thursday morning and arrived that evening to a beautiful spread of chocolate fountains, fruit, cakes, sparkling grape juice and cheese with crackers. It was like being pampered from the beginning.

We had more than 50 women and four days of freedom. No kids, no husbands, no jobs, just fun. We did have two sessions of lessons that proved to be enlightening.

We were taught by women in our church about how to be spiritual mothers and how to get rid of bitterness in our lives.

We hit the streets of Gatlinburg soon after we got there and some of these women hardly came back to the rooms. Since I didn’t drive, I spent much of the time asking where people were going and asking if I could stick out a leg and catch a ride.

Whenever you go to Gatlinburg, the food is always on your mind. All we talked about on the way there was fudge, Fanny Farkle and funnel cakes. A true shopper hits a couple of stores and then stops for a lemonade; hits a few stores and then stops for a snack; hits a few more and then it’s time for a big sit-down lunch.

We shopped for hours on Thursday and Friday, but when Saturday came, it was time for business. You may not believe it, but this busload of women had our priorities right. There were about 20 of us who would not leave until our prospective college football teams had won their games.

Being an Auburn fan made this trip that much better since Auburn played at Tennessee on Saturday. The only thing better than wearing an Auburn shirt on the streets of Tennessee was on Sunday after Auburn had won the game. We gloated for hours.

The Auburn band and players cruised the strip of Gatlinburg during the weekend and we made sure to let them know we appreciated them by yelling out a big “War Eagle” every time we saw them.

And everyone knows that when a group of women get together, there is plenty of laughing, crying and talking. We did our fair share of each of those.

We let our hair down and really got to know the women that we go to church with. Some got to know me a little more than they probably wanted to, but they said they still loved me at the end of the week.

All in all, I would suggest to every women’s group of every church to take a few days and get away together. You never know what you might have in common with Mrs. Betty who sits two rows over from you.