My first impression on coming on retreat to St Beuno’s was surprise and relief at the range of milks available to accompany my coffee.

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I remember my shoulders relaxing and thinking,

‘If they can offer a range of different milks because people have different needs, then I am going to be okay here.’

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Coming to St Beuno’s was a major change for me and I didn’t really know what to expect. I had been going to another smaller retreat house regularly for 18 years, but with my Spiritual Director moving abroad, in those pre-Zoom days he encouraged me to come to St Beuno’s.

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I arrived for the weekend retreat tired and apprehensive. I do remember booking the retreat some months in advance and then finding myself coming to St Beuno’s a few days before a job interview in the NHS.

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My head was swirling with potential interview questions, as well as the usual ‘What happens if I get or don’t get the job?’ Yet at the same time I knew that I wanted to be at St Beuno’s, and continue to deepen my walk with God, so consented to laying all my preoccupations with the job to one side for the duration of those few days.

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Ignatian Spirituality was new to me, and I wasn’t yet aware of the particular use of words like discernment, consolation or desolation in an Ignatian context, which were to become helpful vocabulary to articulate my life experiences over the following years.

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I was apprehensive at the thought of being accompanied by someone other than my warm yet forthright Capuchin director. We had got used to each other’s idiosyncrasies over many years and had got to the point of a kind of comfortable joint spiritual shorthand which I knew I would miss.

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When asked by him what I wanted from my very first retreat 18 years previously, I had described myself as wanting to deepen my prayer life.

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I remember saying I was skating on a frozen lake yet aware that there were great depths beneath the ice, which I wanted to explore.

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I wanted to deepen my relationship with God.

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So fast forward to 18 years later to where I sat playing with my nails awaiting to be invited into the meeting room at St Beuno’s to meet with my new director Renate Dullmann. I felt unsure and tentative yet committed to being there.

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I walked in, sat down, my eyes drawn to an easel placed artistically between me and the director. I let out a gasp, as on that easel sat a beautiful, framed painting of a frozen lake identical to the one which I had tentatively described 18 years previously.

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I was moved at the realisation of God’s attention to detail and His deep knowledge of my needs, and when I might actually require a little nudge to remind me of this.

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Reader, I got that job, and Beuno’s become for me a place of refreshment and growth, during the following years.