60 | Holy Ground Retreats for Grieving Moms | Moria Rooney

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In this heartfelt and Spirit-led episode, Ashley welcomes returning guest Moria Rooney to share the God-breathed vision behind her new ministry, Holy Ground Retreats. A follow-up to Episode 21, this conversation continues Moria’s story of grief, healing, and purpose after the loss of her son, Noah. Moria opens up about her calling to step away from her first ministry, Mother of Wilde, and follow God into the unknown of hosting biblically based retreats for grieving moms. This powerful conversation will encourage you to pursue deep healing in the presence of Jesus, step into authentic community, and recognize the beauty of a Savior who meets us in our pain with abundant hope.

In this episode, we discussed:

• The inspiration and surrender behind launching Holy Ground Retreats

• How smaller, intimate gatherings create space for deep healing

• Grieving in isolation vs. grieving in Christ-centered community

• The importance of addressing unbiblical beliefs around suffering and loss

• Worship, deliverance, rededications, and baptisms at the first Holy Ground retreat

• A powerful God story of how the Lord provided a multimillion-dollar beach house

• Why every grieving mom needs a safe space to encounter Jesus

• Using your baby’s story to share the Gospel and build the Kingdom

Full transcript below.

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MEET OUR GUEST

Moria Rooney is a follower of Christ, wife, mom, and founder of the ministries, Mother of Wilde and Holy Ground. After her son, Noah, was unexpectedly stillborn, she has been on a journey to help grieving moms who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss encounter the presence of God.

She is passionate about expanding Jesus' Kingdom on earth and igniting faith in others while unapologetically preaching the Gospel. She lives in Hampstead, North Carolina with her husband, Brian, and their two children, Roman and Eden.

Connect with Moria:

Instagram: @holygroundretreats

Website: www.holygroundretreats.org/

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Ashley Opliger is the Executive Director of Bridget's Cradles, a nonprofit organization based in Wichita, Kansas that donates cradles to over 1,500 hospitals in all 50 states and comforts over 30,000 bereaved families a year.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Episode 60 | Holy Ground Retreats for Grieving Moms | Moria Rooney

Ashley Opliger: [00:00:05] You’re listening to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley Opliger. I’m a wife, mom, and follower of Christ who founded Bridget’s Cradles, a nonprofit ministry in memory of my daughter, Bridget, who was stillborn at 24 weeks. 

Cradled in Hope is a Gospel-focused podcast for grieving moms to find comfort, hope, and healing after the loss of a baby. We want this to be a safe place for your broken heart to land. 

Here, we are going to trust God’s promise to heal our hearts, restore our joy, and use our grief for good. With faith in Jesus and eyes fixed on Heaven, we do not have to grieve without hope. We believe that Jesus cradles us in hope while He cradles our babies in Heaven. 

Welcome to the Cradled in Hope Podcast.

Ashley Opliger: [00:00:54] Welcome back to another episode of Cradled in Hope. I am so excited to introduce our next guest, Moria Rooney, who has actually been on our podcast before; she was on Episode 21, if you want to go back and listen to her share her entire story of losing her son Noah, and then starting a business called Mother of Wilde, where she made custom personalized memorial prints for families who have lost a baby.

And so, if you want to hear more background on Noah's story or the birth of Mother of Wilde, please go listen to Episode 21, which we will link in our show notes. But I'm excited to have her back today because she's going to share about her new ministry. It's called Holy Ground Retreats, and this is specifically for grieving moms, and she has just started it this year. And I really wanted her to come on and share her heart behind it and give us an update of where she is at in her own journey with the Lord. 

So, let me share a little bit about Moria with you. She is a follower of Christ, a wife, a mom, and founder of the ministries Mother of Wilde and Holy Ground. After her son Noah was unexpectedly stillborn, she has been on a journey to help grieving moms who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss encounter the presence of God. She is passionate about expanding Jesus' Kingdom on earth and igniting faith in others while unapologetically sharing the Gospel. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. 

I am so excited to have Moria back. Let's welcome her now.

Ashley Opliger: [00:02:28] Welcome back, Moria to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. 

Moria Rooney: [00:02:31] Hey, thank you for having me. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:02:34] So you and I have developed such a beautiful friendship, and we love partnering Bridget’s Cradles with Mother of Wilde and all of the amazing things that you've done through your memorial prints for families.

But since you've been on our podcast, you have ventured into a new ministry space called Holy Ground Retreats, and I am so excited to let all of our listeners know about these retreats and hear your heart behind this mission and how they can sign up for a retreat. So, would you introduce yourself and then start sharing about Holy Ground?

Moria Rooney: [00:03:15] Yeah, I'd love to. My name's Moria Rooney. I am located in Wilmington, North Carolina. And a little bit about me, been married for 11 years. I have three babies: Roman, he is five, Eden is two, and then Noah, he would be four. He is in Heaven. And so really, our ministries have started through Noah's life.

About four years ago after Noah was born, well stillborn at 35 weeks, I decided to start Mother of Wilde, which we had talked about on the previous podcast, but essentially creating beautiful memorial prints for babies that are in Heaven for their families and to bring the hope of Christ to moms and love on them. 

And I guess it's been four years now, and the last year the Lord has given me this beautiful vision of actually giving Mother of Wilde away, which seems super bittersweet, but giving Mother of Wilde away and allowing another mom to really run with it, someone who's just on fire for the Lord, and allowing that to be a new season for her. 

And so He's transitioned me to really pour into a different ministry called Holy Ground. And what Holy Ground will do is offer biblically-based retreats for bereaved moms, specifically who have lost a child, whether it be to infant loss or pregnancy loss. 

And so there at our retreats, we will preach the Gospel. We will talk about principles of Scripture, bring hope to moms who are hurting. And really, we are going to be looking at a lot of topics like unbiblical ideologies in relation to losing a child and what that looks like.

We will talk about grieving and suffering through the lens of the Gospel. And yeah, we're really excited. We've already started; first retreat was a couple weeks ago, and the Lord came in such a tangible way. It was amazing. And so we have two other retreats for the fall. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:05:26] Well, I love it. I love your vision.

It's so important to give grieving women the opportunity to be together in community and to find other Christ-centered women who want to grieve the Lord's way and want to rely on their faith through this journey. But they're also broken, and they're grieving, and they're sad, and they are experiencing this pain that maybe their friends and family members don't understand.

And so to come into this safe place where other women understand their pain, they know the emotions that they're going through, but they can sit in their sadness together and encourage each other with the hope of Christ, and walk through some of those unbiblical errors in theology that even followers of Jesus face.

I know as a devoted follower of Jesus, there were things that I had to reckon with within my faith that I had to say, “Wait a second, why do I believe that as a follower of Jesus only good things should happen to me, and that if God allowed my baby to die, then there must be something wrong with Him or wrong with me, and that's not accurate?”

And so I love that you're, in these retreats, spending intentional time to peel back these layers on our belief system and addressing the lies of the enemy.

Moria Rooney: [00:06:46] I think that's a big one, where you're saying is the community aspect is crucial, and I think that's important, not even just after you've lost a baby, but just in general. Right?

We see in Scripture Jesus had community and the importance of that, but also how you were talking about being able to have tools and being able to actually know what Scripture says so you don't feel like you're spiraling with a lie that the enemy has given you. 

So what we really hope to do in the retreats is to shed light on what Scripture actually says versus what the culture says, or what the community in this loss community actually says about our children, and trying to allow women to understand what's Truth so these lies don't continue spiraling.

Ashley Opliger: [00:07:40] Absolutely. Because that's exactly what will happen, is that these lies get planted. And the way I wrote about it in my book is like when we believe lies, those are like rotten seeds that are being planted, and they will produce spoiled fruit. But when we have the Truth, when we have the truth of God's Word planted in us, it brings about good fruit and the fruit of the Spirit.

And so I think it's important that we reflect on the thoughts that we're thinking, because our thought life will really impact our behaviors. It will impact how we grieve, how we view God, how we view our faith. And so it's really important to sit back and think about the things we're thinking about. And that's an interesting way to word it, but so much of our thought life will impact our grieving journey.

Moria Rooney: [00:08:34] Yeah. That's so good. That's so good. I think a lot of the women that, even though, like the women that have come to the first retreat, you start to see the patterns that have been false, but sometimes it takes other people actually being able to speak into that. 

I think a lot of times what we do when we lose a child, someone so precious to us, is we tend to retreat, and we tend to want to isolate. But really, I think what the Lord wills for us is community. Not necessarily that you need to have 12 women or a huge group, but have a couple people who can really speak life into you. Even if you don't feel like praying, people who can intercede for you and fight for you in the Spirit. I think that is really crucial.

Ashley Opliger: [00:09:22]  Yes.

Moria Rooney: [00:09:22] Yeah.

Ashley Opliger: [00:09:22] I just want to comment on something you said. Actually, as I've gotten older, I've really realized I would rather have a small circle of friends that I can go very deep with than have dozens or hundreds of friends that I am shallow or just surface-level with. 

Because I think as you age and as you mature, you crave being authentic and vulnerable, going deep, and really being able to share your heart, your fears, your struggle, and the pain that you're feeling. And I don't think we can find healing when we just have to put on a mask and be superficial and stay at this level.

And in our support groups, anytime a mom has come forward and just been really raw and emotional and deep about what she's thinking and feeling, it's like the door opens up, and everyone else is like, “Me too. I've walked through that.” And it's like vulnerability breeds vulnerability, and those are the kinds of friendships that I seek and that I appreciate in my life. And so I do think there's value in your retreats being smaller.

And so why don't you speak to the fact that your retreats have a cap on how many people can attend and that you are being very intentional about this being a very close-knit, very deep and authentic group of women.

Moria Rooney: [00:10:44] Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, where this began was that I'd gone to a couple large retreats in the loss community. And although I loved them, I always left feeling like, “Man, they were really big.” And at 75 women, I'm like, “How intimate can we get with that many women?” 

But also, they always had a speaker. And what those retreats typically look like is they have a speaker, they talk for two days through a bunch of different sessions, and then you'll have breakouts where women get in a more intimate setting. They talk about their testimony, they talk about how they've seen the hand of God through loss. 

That's the place where it actually gets deep. It's not in those big settings with worship or when we're listening to speakers or doing the crafts and all that stuff. The vulnerability is really in those small, intimate settings. 

And so coming back from the retreats that I'd gone to, I always felt like the Lord was saying, “There's more.” And so at this time, I was still really into Mother of Wilde, but I felt like the Lord was saying, “Create these retreats that you want to see.”

And so I felt like He gave me the vision of having retreats that looked much different than anything the loss community was actually doing, which seemed a little scary because I'm like, “Well, Lord, they're all going this way. This must be the direction that I should be going too, if You're giving me the idea for a retreat.”

But what He was saying, and the vision that I feel like He is giving me, is that it's supposed to be seven women registering to come. We study Scripture together, we break bread together with Communion. We share our testimonies, we lament together. We do a lot of worship, we build friendships. We weep, we laugh, but we are really doing all that in the most transparent, vulnerable way.

And I think that, like you said, it breeds the intimacy. But also, every bit of our retreat, it's not about the music, it's not about the decorations. It's literally just about all of us sitting in the presence of God. 

The Lord had told me, “We're not having speakers. All of these women have a story to tell.” All of these women have things that they want to be able to get off their chest, and they want to be able to do that in an environment that is just in the presence of God, a holy place. 

And so, as I kept wrestling with the Lord, what does this look like? I just kept coming back to holy and heavy, because it is heavy. These are heavy conversations, and some of these women coming here have never shared their child's story at all. And not even just their child's story, but their testimony of following the Lord and what that looks like. 

Because we all come from very different backgrounds, very different family situations and dynamics, and sometimes even different faiths. I don't think even all the women that come to the retreat are completely sold out following the Lord. And even if they are, we all have a different level of spiritual maturity in our hunger for the Lord. So it all looks drastically different. 

But I think the one main thing that every single woman that is signed up to come to our retreat is they have a hunger to want to be in the presence of the Lord. They don't have a hunger to come and hear me teach. And I pray and I've said that to the Lord, “They're not coming for me. They're coming to sit with You.”

They're coming to encounter the presence of the Lord, to really find healing at the feet of Jesus. And so I think that is what makes our retreats different, is that these women are coming for real healing to be touched by Jesus. They're not coming to just hear a TED talk. They're coming to really meet their Savior. 

And so I think when people have a supernatural encounter with the One who created them, with the One who holds their children, they are forever changed. It's undeniable.

Ashley Opliger: [00:14:39] Amen. Amen. I love that you are so intentional about creating this sacred and safe space for women to just be in the presence of the Lord and be in the presence of each other.

And I will say there are many retreat options, as you mentioned, and I think there's value in all the different options, and there's very much healing that can happen in those larger group settings. I do agree with you, a lot of times that vulnerability does happen in the smaller groups. 

Speaking for myself, I just came from a Christian communicators retreat and it was amazing. And we did have a speaker, and I love Jennifer Dukes Lee, she's my editor, and she had just such powerful message, and it really did change me and help me. 

And we had these soul care sessions, but then what was so powerful was in these breakouts, I met these women, and I heard their testimonies. And honestly, when I left, it was like, “Wow.” I was so encouraged by other women's stories that came with brokenness that wasn't my exact story, but it was like, “Wow, the Lord's working on their heart.” 

And although there were so many aspects of this retreat that were beneficial to me, I think one of the deepest things was the friendships that I took away from. And so I love that your retreat is really focusing on that aspect of it, because I do think there is so much healing and community and so much freedom that you find when you can share your story and let other people hear it.

I know for me, when I was on this retreat, there was a woman that said, “I feel like the Holy Spirit just wants me to listen, Ashley, just to listen to whatever it is that you have.” And I shared my dad's story, the whole night of what happened, and I was just bawling, and it was so healing to just speak those words out and for someone to say, “I'm here. I want to hear your story.”

And I think there's a lot of power in sharing our stories, so just want to commend you for listening to the Holy Spirit and saying there's nothing wrong with these retreats that you've been to and that I've been to, and that honestly, I might speak at one day. But I think what you're saying is, “I want more of this.”

Moria Rooney: [00:16:58] Yeah. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:14:39] This is needed in our world and in our pregnancy loss space. It's needed.

Moria Rooney: [00:17:06] Absolutely. Yeah, and I want to just make sure everyone heard my heart on that. There's nothing wrong with the retreats that are out there, and I do see the hand of the Lord on them. These women are sold out for the Lord. They love the Lord.

What I am saying is the Lord has given me a different vision of how He wants our retreats to go and the way that He wants our retreats to look, and they just look different. But I think that is also the beauty in the body of Christ, is that we have different giftings for different things.

And especially how we're talking about spiritual maturity too, some people may not be ready to go super, super deep, even theologically. Some people may just be really interested in the community aspect or the worship aspect. It all really just depends on their own personal walk. 

And so I would say wherever the Holy Spirit is prompting you to go, I would just listen and obey that.

Ashley Opliger: [00:17:59] Amen. Yes. And that's something too in our ministry space, and that you and I have had conversations about this, is like it is the beauty of the body of Christ that all these different organizations exist and do different things. And they're never meant to compete with each other. They're meant to complement each other.

And the beauty is that someone can go to one retreat and to your retreat or receive a Bridget’s Cradles and a Molly Bear, which sadly, Molly Bear organization, they're closing their doors. But my heart has always been: grieving parents can never have enough resources or never have enough options of ways to find healing through the Lord.

And so it's beautiful that you're listening and you're saying, “God's asking me to do this very specific thing,” because of a burden that He placed on your heart to say, “We need this. We need authentic relationship.”

And that does happen best in small groups, because there have been times with our support groups that we do every month where I've had times where only one person has shown up.

And it's interesting because that mom will always say, “Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry.”

They feel like they're wasting our time or something. 

And I'm like, “No. It was obvious that God had you come, because how I see it is that God wanted you to have some one-on-one time with me.” And honestly, the times that our support groups have been smaller, we always go deeper.

It's literally the smaller our group, the deeper we go. And it's been incredible, the healing that has come out of some of these small groups, where you just feel safe to just share these really hard and dark parts of the grief journey, to be honest. 

And so, obviously, your last retreat was sacred and confidential, and so I want to honor those seven women and what happened there at the retreat. But can you just give us an overview of what that looked like and what the Lord did as a group?

Moria Rooney: [00:20:00] Yeah, absolutely.

Our retreats are three days. We have seven different sessions, so we would talk about our testimonies and grieving, suffering. We would look at the fullness of the Gospel, literally from Genesis to Revelation, just because when people say that they follow Jesus, I never really know what Jesus that they follow. Right?

I don't know what they've heard about the Lord, so I like to start fresh. So we talk about the fullness of the Gospel, and then we also look at intimacy with the Lord, how to fight in the Spirit, being consecrated to Him. 

But honestly, the women that came, it was so beautiful. It was so intentional. I can tell just how the Lord puts people together. He knew all these women needed to be there to just create covenant friendships and worship and things like that. 

But even prior to the women coming, I stayed there the night before just to pray over the space, be with the Lord, anoint the home. And it was so beautiful. I had felt like so many people had just given me like this prophetic words of, “The Lord is there and that He's just creating this beautiful dome over the lake property where you're at,” because we were on like 56 acres, private property with a beautiful lake house. 

That's another total God story, because the Lord had given it to us for free, but how the Lord was there, and I could just feel His presence. But even when the women came, you could just see, it's like they came expectant to meet with the Lord.

And we had a few Zooms prior, so it broke the ice, and the women knew each other. We had a group chat even before coming, so it wasn't like they didn't know who each other was. They knew their intentions of coming. So it's like when they got there, everyone was expectant to just be in the presence of the Lord. 

We do a lot of worship. We do worship before every single session just to posture the women's hearts to receive and just to allow them, like you had said, to be in a quiet space before the Lord. 

And we also have free worship, like worship however you want. We would just have the doors open, the windows open. It was a beautiful weekend. The Lord gave us beautiful weather, but we would just have the music blaring and just allowing each woman to worship the Lord in the way that they wanted to worship. And so I felt like the Lord wanted them to have the freedom to be able to do that in a space where maybe they don't typically have with Him. So that was really beautiful. 

And we had gone through inner healing and deliverance. We had three women that wanted to rededicate their lives to the Lord and got baptized, which was so amazing! I don't even know if I, did I tell you, it overlapped with Noah's birthday, his fourth birthday?

Ashley Opliger: [00:22:47] No, you didn’t. Wow. 

Moria Rooney: [00:22:48] Yeah, and I felt like the Lord had told me “Birth Holy Ground on Noah's birth. And so that is for sure the only one I'll ever have on his birthday. because that's the only time that I was actually away from my family for Noah's birthday.

But it was just so beautiful. Just tangibly, you could just feel the presence of the Lord. And I think that's one thing that women, they left and even the second night they got up and I remember one of the girls, she said, “If I only came for this,” like we still had like a day and a half left. She's like, “If I only came for this, I just feel changed.”

And even seeing the women come up out of the water with a baptism, she's like, “It's cold outside, but I just feel hot.”

I'm like, “That is Jesus just all over you.” I think the Lord, He showed up in ways that I never would've been able to. I kept going into it saying, “Lord, I am going to be fluid to however your Spirit wants to move.” Right? “Yes, I have an agenda. Yes, I have something that I feel like You really want me to teach, but Lord, move however You want to move. This is Yours.” 

I want to be so, so sensitive to the Holy Spirit that if He's telling me, “Hey, we're going to press in here longer,” we'll do it. Or if He's telling me, “We're going to skip this session,” because He's moving us in a direction, I want to be fluid enough to be able to listen and obey to what He is wanting us to do, and be open to the move of His Spirit moving in ways that maybe I never really intended.

Even like one point of the worship, I remember I've heard this song so many times. There's a song called I Prophesy by Brandon Lake, and at one point in the lyrics it says, “A song of joy in a barren womb.” And I've heard that so many times. I love that song. I sing it at my house.

And I'd been praying, leading up to this event, like, “Lord, I want to have a heart for these women like You do. I want to be able to actually feel their pain in the way that You do.” 

Well, we start singing this song. And granted, I've heard it a million times listening to it in the car, blaring it, and at that point where I sung it, everyone's just in worship all around the room. And I sing that lyric, “A song of joy in a barren womb,” and I feel the overwhelming presence of the Lord fall on me in a way that I've never experienced before. 

And in, I don't know, it felt like eternity, but it was probably like 15 real seconds where I felt the weight, like the weight of the Lord, of what He felt for the women that were there, just the pain that they were going through.

And everyone's in their own place with the Lord, some women are on the floor, some people are on the porch, but it's like the Lord allowed me in that moment to feel so much so where I couldn't even, I couldn't contain it. Like I was just, I was beside myself.

And so I think it's those moments where you just get a touch of Jesus, and it doesn't always look like that. His presence can manifest many different ways, but if you're open to being touched by the Lord however He wants to touch you, however He wants to use you, He wants to come. 

I think that's the beauty of the New Covenant, is that there is no veil. Literally, all you have to do is say, “Jesus, come.” He wants to come. He pursues us more than we pursue Him, and He’s speaking to us more than we're actually listening. 

But if I actually try and wrap my brain around that weekend, it's impossible. 

In our last session, which we were supposed to have, which is talking about being consecrated to God and how when we honor God, we're actually honoring our children and how each time we share our children's story, they really have the opportunity to share the Gospel alongside, we skipped that the entire last session and actually went into making anointing oils. 

And we stayed up til two in the morning praying over women's wombs, and just Spirit-led prayer, praying over marriages and praying over minds, that just like strongholds be broken off. And every single woman, we probably prayed for 20 minutes over them. 

So it's crazy. But His plans are good. And I think if you are open to allowing Him to move however He wants to move, He'll surprise you.

Ashley Opliger: [00:27:07] Amen. What a retreat! But it was everything that those seven women needed, and the Lord moved. And praise God for the women who rededicated their lives to Christ and for those who were baptized! Literal souls being saved on your retreats, you cannot ask for anything more. And I think God's going to continue to do abundantly more than you can expect or imagine. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:27:33] We hope you are enjoying this episode so far. We want to take a quick break to tell you about some resources our ministry provides to grieving moms. 

On our website, bridgetscradles.com, you can find hope-filled resources on grieving and healing including memorial ideas, quotes & Scripture, featured stories, and recommended books and other organizations. We share ideas on how to navigate difficult days such as due dates, Heaven Days, and holidays. 

In addition, every month I lead Christ-centered support groups for bereaved moms called Hope Gatherings, both in-person and online. You can find a list of upcoming dates and sign up for our next support group on our website. 

Lastly, we would love for you to connect with us on Facebook and Instagram. You can find us on these three pages: @bridgetscradles, @cradledinhope, and my personal page @ashleyopliger. You can also join our private Cradled in Hope Facebook group for grieving moms to find community. We would be honored to hear your baby’s story and be praying for you by name. Now let’s get back to our episode.

Ashley Opliger: [00:028:42] Will you share with me the dates of your next retreats? And also, if you could share the God story of how God orchestrated for you to have a beautiful beach home in Florida to do these retreats at.

Moria Rooney: [00:28:59] Yeah, absolutely. I'll share the dates, but crazily enough, they are already full, actually.

Ashley Opliger: [00:029:07] Wow. Okay. 

Moria Rooney: [00:29:09] So I'll share them. We have more coming next year, and we may actually do one more this year, but yeah, our intention is to have four a year. I think that's the direction that the Lord has given me, unless He decides to pivot and do more or do something different. 

But we have one September and October of this year, but the moment that we put them out, they booked within a week, and they booked 10 months in advance, which I think is crazy.

Ashley Opliger: [00:29:40] Wow. 

Moria Rooney: [00:29:40] That is crazy. Absolutely crazy. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:29:40] Amazing. That’s a testament that this is something that people are hungry for.

Moria Rooney: [00:29:45] Yeah. Yeah, and I think that there's a hunger for people to want to go deep with the Lord. And I think if they're not finding it in their current community or if they're not finding it at church or in their own relationships, people are really wanting more of the Lord and to be around other people who are really hungry for the Lord.

And I think you said it best in terms of saving souls. That is really the focus of our retreat, truly. Yes, we have an intimate place for women to find inner healing and honor their children, and really encounter the presence of the Lord. But truly, what we're wanting to do is to equip women with a hunger to be able to go out and be able to preach the Gospel.

And often that looks like just very ordinary conversations of being so in tune with the Lord and walking in the Spirit to be able to have the opportunity to pray for people. So that's really what our retreat is about. So the community aspect, yes, but we are really after the heart of the Father and what that looks like.

And truly, one of the main things that I say, and it's something that we talk about in our retreats when we're talking about the Gospel, is how the Lord commissioned us was to follow Him. 

So when we accept and say, “Yes, Jesus, I want You in my heart. I do want to follow You,” we are meant to be fishers of men. And so that is what we are trying to equip our women that are coming and our moms coming to be eager to actually understand the truth of the Gospel, but to also be able to share that truth with other people who may not know Jesus, but to actually be able to use their children's story to advance the Kingdom.

Ashley Opliger: [00:31:33] Amen. Yes. I actually, in my book, wrote about how the highest calling that our babies in Heaven could have would be leading people to Christ from Heaven. And how do they do that? They do that through their Mommies and their Daddies sharing the Gospel down on earth and sharing their story.

And Noah is a part of your Kingdom family. Bridget is a part of my Kingdom family. And even though some of our family is in Heaven and some of us are on earth, we're one family and our goal is to glorify Christ. And we do that by sharing the Gospel with words and actions and deed. And so I love that's such a heart of your ministry. 

I'm sad to hear that it's already booked so that the people listening to this can't sign up. But I'm also praising the Lord that it is completely booked because that just tells me that this is something that's very needed. 

And maybe you could share how people can get on a waiting list or get on your mailing list where they can go to find out more information about this as you release new dates in the future, but also sharing about that beach house.

Moria Rooney: [00:32:38] Yeah, absolutely. You can actually find more information, you just go to holygroundretreats.org. And if you go on there, you can actually sign up. It's called a waiting list, it's somewhere on our website. I believe it's under Retreats, but you can sign up for a 2026 Retreat Wait List. And essentially what that does is you'll be the first to be notified about any future retreats because they fill up so quickly. You'll be the first to know.

And so we typically give the people on the Wait List a week to decide if those dates work for them. And if not, we push out whatever we have available, whatever is left, to the online community, because we're not marketing this or anything. It's really just the Lord that's sending people. 

But I think as women come and they experience a life change of being with the Lord and really finding healing, I think it's going to spread like a wildfire. I really do.

Ashley Opliger: [00:33:36] Amen.

Moria Rooney: [00:33:36] Yeah.

Ashley Opliger: [00:33:38] I just want to say thank you that I get to be a part of those retreats this year in a small way. You had reached out to me, and I'm donating my books to all the women who will be there, and so I'm so honored that Cradled in Hope will get to be there. And I'll get to be there in the Spirit, of course, covering you and the retreat in prayer and all the women that are going to be there.

And so thank you, even though you don't have speakers, that I get to speak into the lives of women through my testimony in my book, and I pray that's a blessing to you, and I am so expectant for what God's going to continue to do through you.

Moria Rooney: [00:34:15] It is a big blessing. Yeah, I know I've told you thank you. But yeah, I'm excited for our women to be able to hear your story, hear about Bridget, and just find hope.

Sometimes, it's nice to be able to have something tangible that they can read after the retreat. So yeah, that's a big blessing for our ministry and for our moms, so thank you.

Ashley Opliger: [00:34:32] Yes, it's such an honor. And so, I'm sorry, we're going to get back to this beach house, because you have to end this episode on telling the God story of how He provided this beautiful beach house to be the retreat home for your fall dates, and I think from here on out, possibly.

Moria Rooney: [00:34:51] Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you, definitely a God story. 

I had been searching, looking for a beach house, because I feel like whenever we started Holy Ground, the Lord gave me the vision that it was at the beach. And so our first retreat, the Lord gave me a beautiful house that was right on the lake for free.

And I remember saying, “Lord, this is beautiful, but I know You gave me the vision for a beach.”

But I felt like the Lord said, “Don't despise small beginnings.” And also that this lake house was in my hometown where Noah was born. 

And so I said, “All right, Lord, I'm hearing You.” And I kept staying focused on the first retreat, but still praying for this beach house that I know the Lord had promised.

And I'd been searching in my hometown for beach houses, and I'm thinking, “Lord, for three nights, it's crazy expensive.” It's like $5,000, and at the rate that I felt like the Lord wanted the women to come, and especially the intimacy of only having seven women, I kept saying, “Lord, it's too expensive.” 

And truly, I've always felt like these retreats should be free, but that's a whole side note. I know the Lord will allow for them to be free, so I know He will. I'm praying on that. 

But I kept saying, “Lord, I don't know anyone with a beach house.” We had put it out to see if any of the women in the loss community had a beach home that was an Airbnb, that maybe they would want to donate on behalf of their child in Heaven.

And I kept getting met with people that were interested in donating their home, but nothing felt right. Nothing felt like this beautiful, just big enough space. There was just always something that just didn't seem right.

So I had a guy randomly reach out to me, and I say random, but nothing that the Lord does is random. But a guy reached out to me that I don't know, on social media, and he has said, “Hey, I know you had posted something about needing a retreat, like a Christian retreat space.” And he said, “I would love to talk. I own a rental management company, and we have homes in Florida and homes in Nashville.”

And at first I was like, “Okay, I don't know about this guy. I don't know him.” I like to vet everybody. And so I got on the phone with him the next day, and this is how crazy the Lord works because He moved very quickly on this. 

This guy reached out to me on a Saturday night. We got on the phone Sunday morning, and we had a crazy spirit-filled conversation, the presence of Lord was so strong!  I don't know if you've ever had that before, but I didn't feel like I needed to pray about anything because I felt like the Lord was giving me an overwhelming yes to our conversation. 

I felt like I had known this guy forever. I talked to him and his wife. They own a rental management company, but in the basis of their contract with owners, what they typically do, they have a clause that allows for owners to be generous and donate their homes at least once a year for anything that's like a generous donation. 

And so what he said to me is that if we have owners that decide that this doesn't seem like a good fit, then they're probably not the right owners that we want, because we want people who are just willing. 

We do all the back work. They don't need to do anything other than say yes, because we want to be able to bless people. And they really love the Lord, so they're trying to allow this to be a certain part of their business where they can bless other people and love on other people, and all they have to do, the homeowners, is just say yes. 

Well, Sunday morning, I have this conversation with him. Sunday night, he sends me these homes, and I told him the whole vision of Holy Ground and what we wanted to do. And he was just like, “Wow.”

And I kept saying to him, “Why do you want to do this for me? Why? You don't know us.”

And then his thought was, “If I don't do this, I'll be disobedient to the Lord, because I feel like the Lord is telling me to do this,” which is so crazy.

But we get off the phone, he's already explained to me that he has this whole team where I can ship my stuff there. And he was telling me, “You really want to have it in Florida, because most of the homes we have in Florida have pools, so the women can be baptized. And the homes that we have in Nashville don't.” I mean, they have a huge portfolio of like a hundred homes.

And so we get off the phone and Sunday night he sends me seven different listings of multimillion dollar homes that are just absolutely stunning. And he said, “I want you to have some skin in the game. So pick which home that you like the best, whatever one you’re feeling the Lord is pulling you to, and I'll reach out to that owner because I have very good relationships, basically text basis, with these owners.”

And so I feel like the Lord pulls me to one. I send it to him and I'm just like in this, I don't want to say blind faith, but I'm like, “Lord, what are You doing? This is crazy!”

And also in our conversation, which is a huge thing to highlight, he said, “I'm going to do all this for you for free. You don't have to pay for cleaning, you don't have to do anything. Me and my entire team will coordinate everything. We'll make sure the gifts that you send are on the beds when the women arrive. We'll make sure you have coffee, we'll make sure you have drinks. We'll make sure everything is set up for you. There's private beach access, anything that you could ever want. We'll get you connected with the caterers. We'll do all these things.” 

At no expense to him at all. Right? He gets nothing out of it and I pay nothing for him to do all this other than he is feeling compelled by the move of God to do this for us.

Well, I send him the home that I feel like the Lord's pulling me to. The next morning he reaches out to the owner and he asks them, he tells a little bit about our ministry. He asks them if we could have two retreats there, not just one, but two. And within five minutes, they say yes. And that very evening we solidified the dates for two fall retreats.

And he calls me on the phone and he says, “Moria, I just want to let you know the Lord did all of this. The Lord prompted me to reach out to you. The Lord prompted these owners to say yes.” You can't make this stuff up, right? He's like, “But I wanted to tell you, Moria, this is the most expensive home that we have in our portfolio. It's $6.4 million, and I want you to know the Lord has just completely given it to you for free for these moms.” 

And to make something super clear. The Lord did not need this home to show up. The Lord shows up on streets. He shows up anywhere. He doesn't need a big extravagant home. But what He did in this moment is show the power and the glory and the things that He's capable of doing when we're just obedient.

And honestly, it is the love that He pours out on His daughters to want to give them something so beautiful, because in my mind, the things that I was thinking and the retreat space that I had for the women, it was beautiful, but the Lord always has more. He always has something just beyond what we could ever think or comprehend.

I'm beyond myself, my mouth is still just wide open, like, “Lord, how did You do that?” It's incredible.

Ashley Opliger: [00:42:19] And just God saying, “Watch what I can do. Watch what I can do behind the scenes. I can show up in ways that you never would expect or imagine.”

And there's so many times, I think, too, of just placing a need out there and letting the Lord work behind the scenes and surprise us in extravagant ways. 

And to your point, you didn't need a $6.4 million house for Jesus to show up. He could have done it anywhere. But as you mentioned, what an extravagant gift to give this beautiful place for these moms showing up in their darkest hour to feel loved on, to feel cared for, and to just feel safe. And with the backdrop of God's beautiful Creation, I feel like there's a lot of healing that happens.

And at the beach or in the mountains, I just got back from my own retreat in the mountains. And I think anytime we're in the presence of His Creation and we just see the majesty and the glory of God, it’s a prime place to feel Him. 

And so it's amazing that you're going to be there and that God showed up for you in this mighty way. And I know that He has so much in store for Holy Ground. And I just want to say thank you for listening to His voice and to casting this vision with Him and being obedient to what He's asked you to do. And I know that He has good plans.

Moria Rooney: [00:43:42] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I think anyone who's following the Lord that comes with these turns that are unexpected and sometimes at the last hour is like, “Turn here.”

And I'm like, “Ah, I wasn't ready to turn here, Lord.” But He shows up, and when He does, it's just really beautiful. So really excited and expectant for what He is going to do for these fall retreats and the women being able to come and experience His love afresh and encounter Him in ways that they have never encountered Him before. So really excited for it. 

Ashley Opliger: [00:44:19] Amen. Well, Moria, it's been such a blessing to hear your vision and what the Lord is doing already through Holy Ground. Would you mind closing us in prayer and praying for all the women who are listening today?

Moria Rooney: [00:44:32] Absolutely. Yes. 

Thank You, Jesus, for each woman that is here just listening. Lord, I just pray for her heart, God. You know exactly what she's going through, Lord, and so I just ask for Your tangible touch on her. Jesus, I just thank You that You're pursuing her like You've been pursuing me, just like You've been pursuing Ashley.

Lord, I just thank You for all the things that You're doing in the unseen Lord, and I ask that You pour hope into all those places that are hurting, Lord. Make Yourself real, make Yourself known to her in ways that step outside of the box. 

God, I thank You for the love that You have for each woman that's listening, and I thank You for all the things that You're doing in their life. I thank You for their precious children that are in Heaven, God. And I pray that every time that they speak their children's name, God, that You whisper alongside and give people opportunity to hear more about the hope of eternity.

Jesus, I praise You. We love You, God. Thank You for who You are, Jesus. In Your Name we pray. Amen.

Ashley Opliger: [00:45:38] Amen. Thank you so much. 

Thank you for listening to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. We pray that you found hope & healing in today’s episode. 

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss new episodes when they release on the 1st of every month. You can also find this episode’s show notes and a full transcript on our website at bridgetscradles.com/podcast. 

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Thank you so much for listening and sharing. Until next time, we will be praying for you. And remember, as Jesus cradles our babies in Heaven, He cradles us in hope. Though we may grieve, we do not grieve without hope. Thank you so much for listening.

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