Joy That Holds: Trinity’s Annual Retreat
Each year, a group from Trinity steps away from the routines of daily life and gathers for a weekend curated around extended, unhurried time for conversation and connection. This February, about 45 adults and a dozen children traveled to The Abbey Resort for the annual congregational retreat, a tradition that has stretched across decades. From Friday evening through Sunday morning, there is time to talk, to listen, to pray, and to simply be together in ways that a typical Sunday does not allow.
This year’s retreat was led by Pastor Heidi Torgerson from Grace Lutheran Church in La Grange. Her invitation was to consider joy, not as something light or fleeting, but as a resource for resistance in a world that often feels heavy. Many arrived carrying quiet anxieties, personal griefs, or a general sense that things are not as they should be. Her teaching made space for that reality without trying to rush past it.
Throughout Saturday, the group explored the relationship between joy and lament. Rather than opposing forces, they began to feel like two expressions of the same deep truth. Lament names what is broken. Joy, in its truest sense, does not deny that pain and sorrow but holds them within something larger. Joy grows out of belonging, out of lives that are genuinely intertwined. When people are willing to carry one another’s stories, both the sorrow and the beauty, a steadier kind of joy begins to take root.
That understanding opened the door to honest conversation. People spoke plainly about what is hard and uncertain, and also about what continues to bring life. There was no pressure to present a polished version of faith. The tone was grounded, sometimes tender, and at times unexpectedly expansive. In a world that can feel fragmented, the simple act of being known and of knowing others became its own form of joy.
The retreat made room not just for meaningful conversation, but for fun too. On Saturday evening, the group shared in a lively game of charades. It didn’t feel like stepping away from the heart of the weekend so much as another way of entering into it. Joy showed up there too, in the laughter and lightness, gently reminding everyone that goodness still has a way of surprising us.
Sunday morning brought the retreat to a close with worship. During the children’s sermon, led by Lauren Busey, the kids were invited to try lifting Pastor Erik while he sat in a chair. One or two children could not budge him. But together, they managed to lift him off the ground. While Pastor Erik was unsure in the process, no pastors were harmed in the making of this sermon! Both kids and adults were reminded that what feels impossible alone can become possible together.
In a time when the weight of the world can feel overwhelming, it is easy to keep quiet about what hurts or to carry it alone. Pastor Heidi pointed toward a different way. Naming what is heavy and speaking it out loud, especially in the presence of others, begins to loosen its grip. Lament, when it is shared and received with care, becomes something more than private pain. It becomes a place where connection forms and a deeper kind of joy can take root. Not a surface-level happiness, but a steady, grounded joy that comes from telling the truth and being met in it. Joy that shows up not apart from sorrow, but alongside it. In that kind of honesty, there is a growing trust that God is present in it all, holding both the pain and the joy, as critical fuel for the work of justice, mercy, and healing in us all.