She Left the Jar: The Courage to Be Seen, and the Freedom to Let Go

Reflections on the fourth Women of Faith Conference at Alloway and Fisherton Parish Church, Saturday 7 November 2026

We all carry things.

Some are obvious: the responsibilities of family life, the demands of work, the care of others. Some are less visible: worries about tomorrow, regrets about yesterday, expectations we place upon ourselves, or the quiet conviction that we ought to be managing better.

And sometimes we carry these things for so long that we forget what it might feel like to put them down.

On Saturday 7 November, more than a hundred women gathered in the Octagonal Hall for the fourth Women of Faith Conference at Alloway and Fisherton Parish Church, led once again by Karin Stewart and Karlyn Hume. The theme was She Left the Jar, inspired by an encounter in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel.

It was a day of worship, friendship, conversation, laughter and reflection. At its heart lay a deceptively simple question: what are we carrying that we might no longer need to carry alone?

An Unexpected Encounter

The story begins beside a well in Samaria.

A woman arrives to collect water around midday, rather than during the cooler hours when people would ordinarily visit the well. It is an ordinary task on an ordinary day. She has brought her jar, expecting nothing more than to fill it and go home.

But sitting beside the well is Jesus, tired from his journey and thirsty. He asks her for a drink.

It sounds unremarkable until we understand the barriers being crossed. Jesus is Jewish; she is Samaritan. He is a man speaking publicly to a woman. Their communities are divided by long-standing religious and social differences. And she has a complicated personal history, the kind that might leave anyone feeling judged or reluctant to meet others.

Yet Jesus speaks to her. He does not turn away, and he does not demand that she explain herself first. He treats her as someone worthy of his attention.

Guest speaker Linda Watson built the day's teaching around this encounter in three talks: Looking, Listening and Leaving. She began with a simple observation. This was no random meeting. In a story where people usually come to Jesus for healing or answers, here he goes looking for her.

When Life Refuses to Follow Our Plans

There was an unexpected thread of humour through the day. More than one speaker cheerfully admitted to being something of a control freak, a confession that struck a chord with many in the hall.

Wanting to be organised, prepared and capable is hardly a character flaw. Much of family life, work and church life depends on people who take responsibility and make sure things happen. But what happens when life refuses to cooperate?

In two personal conversations, women shared times when circumstances moved beyond their control.

One spoke of caring for a loved one through serious illness during the isolation of the pandemic. The physical demands, the separation from family and the uncertainty became overwhelming. There came a night when she could do no more than ask God for help. In her experience, the answer arrived the next morning in the form of practical support.

Her account was not only about enduring hardship. It was also about finding companionship, purpose and gratitude again after bereavement. She spoke of greeting each new day with thankfulness while keeping close the memory of someone she loved. Faith does not necessarily remove grief, and finding joy again does not mean someone is forgotten. The two learn to live alongside one another.

Another conversation explored the anxiety that can accompany a serious challenge within a family.

This speaker described how she had once believed that enough preparation, research and determination could keep everything running smoothly and protect those she loved. Then came circumstances she could neither predict nor control. Her instinct was to work harder, learn more and anticipate every possibility. There was humour in her account, particularly in the different ways her family approached the situation, but beneath it lay a familiar struggle. She had become so preoccupied with what might happen that she was struggling to be present in what was happening.

It is a familiar thing. We worry because we care, and we plan because we want to protect. But the effort to prevent tomorrow's difficulties can rob us of today.

For her, the story of the woman at the well offered a different view. She began to see the water jar as a symbol of everything she was trying to carry herself: responsibility, anxiety, perfectionism and the belief that she must hold everything together. Leaving the jar did not mean abandoning the people she loved or ceasing to care about their future. It meant recognising that love and responsibility are not the same as control.

Known, Yet Still Accepted

One of the most thought-provoking threads in Linda's teaching concerned the woman's past.

Jesus knew her history, including the five husbands and the man she now lived with, yet the story does not tell us why. Linda was careful to say that we cannot know. We are often quick to form opinions about other people's lives while knowing very little of the experiences that shaped them.

Jesus did not interrogate her. He did not come to condemn. Linda drew a comparison with the prodigal son, whose father never lets him finish his prepared speech and calls for a celebration instead. She told of a young woman who had gone off the rails and was too ashamed to face her grandfather, only to learn that he cared far less about what she had done than about having her back.

She also told the story of Charlotte Elliott, who wanted to sort out her doubts and put her life in order before coming to faith, and was told by a young pastor to come just as she was.

She went on to write the hymn Just as I Am.

There is something deeply reassuring in that. We all want to be understood. We all want to believe that our mistakes and imperfections are not the whole of who we are. Being known and being judged are not the same thing.

In her second talk Linda moved on to listening, and to the invitation to worship in spirit and truth. The woman at the well wanted to know where she should worship: on the mountain of her ancestors or in Jerusalem. Jesus' answer challenged the very premise of her question. God was not confined to a particular place, building or set of rituals. What mattered was the sincerity of the relationship.

Linda spoke of a God who is still speaking through his word and by his Spirit, and described opening a morning devotion while anxious about the future, only to find a reminder of goodness and unfailing love.

More Than Words and Music

The Octagonal Hall was filled with music throughout the day. As in every year, the first song was Come Now Is the Time to Worship, and familiar hymns and contemporary worship songs were led by Karin and Stephen, bringing moments of celebration, reflection and shared faith.

There was warmth and humour, the pleasure of meeting friends and the chance to make new ones. Karin had encouraged everyone to speak to someone they hadn't met before, or to sit beside someone different at coffee or lunch. It was a small suggestion, but it reflected the spirit of the gathering. For a day centred on being seen and accepted, making someone else feel welcome was an appropriate place to begin.

Behind the scenes, volunteers made sure refreshments were served, the technology worked, the music and videos appeared at the right moments and everyone was looked after. Lunch, the stalls and conversations gave time to relax and enjoy one another's company. The day also carried an awareness of those who were missing, including members of the organising team who had been unable to attend. Their absence was acknowledged with affection, a reminder that a community is made up of more than whoever is present on a particular day.

The programme included a scene from the television series The Chosen, depicting the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. It brought the biblical account to life in a very human way: someone accustomed to being judged, gradually realising that the person speaking to her knows her story and has not turned away. The power of the scene lay not only in who Jesus revealed himself to be, but in the change in someone who arrived burdened and left with a sense of possibility. Sometimes the most profound changes begin not with an answer to every problem, but with the experience of being truly seen.

In her final talk Linda reminded the hall that Ayrshire has seen revivals before, from Irvine in the 1620s to the awakenings of the nineteenth century, and that they so often began with women praying. She said she longed to see such days again.

The Jar in the Room

Throughout the conference a real jar stood in the hall, with small pieces of paper beside it.

The women were invited to write down something they wanted to leave behind: a fear, an old hurt, an anxiety, a resentment, or anything that had been weighing on them. The notes were private. Nobody would read them. The organisers explained that the notes would later be burned, a symbolic act of entrusting those burdens to God.

It was a simple invitation, but it carried real meaning. We cannot know what anyone chose to write, and nor should we. Some experiences are too personal to share, and some feelings are hard to put into words. But there is something significant in being offered permission to acknowledge them.

Not every burden can be discarded. A diagnosis remains a diagnosis, a bereavement cannot be undone, and family responsibilities do not disappear because we wish them away. Nor are the things we carry necessarily wrong. Linda made that point in her final talk. The woman's water jar was not a bad thing. It was useful, necessary and part of her daily life. In the same way, our work, our ambitions and our wish to provide for those we love are not wrong. There simply comes a time when something else matters more.

Perhaps leaving the jar is less about rejecting our responsibilities than about reconsidering the weight we give them. It is about recognising that we cannot control everything, that our worth is not measured by what we achieve, and that asking for help is not failure. For the women gathered that day, the invitation was to place those burdens in God's hands, and the jar offered a tangible way of doing it.

What Will We Take Away?

As the afternoon drew to a close, Lorna led a guided meditation. After a day of conversation, teaching and music, it gave an opportunity for stillness. Through gentle breathing and quiet reflection, the women were encouraged to think about what had stayed with them: something Linda had said, a story that echoed their own, a familiar song that had taken on new meaning.

The meditation returned to two questions. What might we need to leave behind? And equally important, what do we want to take away?

It is easy to dwell on the first. We all have things we would gladly surrender: anxiety, regret, fear, disappointment, the pressure to be everything to everyone. The second question asks what might take their place. Greater kindness towards ourselves and others? A willingness to ask for help? A renewed sense of purpose? The courage to approach someone we have avoided, or to believe that our past need not determine our future?

Linda's closing message was not only about personal comfort. She encouraged the women to think about how their faith might be expressed beyond the conference, through prayer, witness and the lives they lead. The woman at the well, after all, did not keep her experience to herself. She went back to her community with a story to tell.

An Ordinary Day, an Extraordinary Possibility

By three o'clock the final prayers had been said, the closing thanks offered and the women were preparing to return to their everyday lives.

The responsibilities waiting at home would still be there. The challenges that had occupied their thoughts before they arrived would not necessarily have gone. Yet the day's theme offered a different way of looking at them.

The woman at the well arrived with a jar to fill. She left it behind because, in an unexpected encounter, she had found something more important than the task that brought her there. Her circumstances had not been erased, and her past had not been rewritten, but her understanding of herself and her future had changed.

Perhaps that is why the story endures. It speaks to the possibility that we are more than our mistakes, more than our fears, more than the responsibilities we carry and more than the circumstances we cannot control. It reminds us that acceptance can be transformative, that compassion can reach across barriers, and that an ordinary encounter can change the direction of a life.

For those who attended, the day offered a chance to explore these truths through worship, scripture, friendship and shared experience. For those who could not be there, and for anyone who might never have imagined attending such a gathering, the invitation to reflect remains.

Because whatever our beliefs, most of us know what it means to carry something heavy.

And perhaps, from time to time, it is worth asking ourselves:

What is in my jar?

And what might become possible if I found the courage to leave it behind?