What's on my mind...

1. Finishing up the last two days of my summer
2. Evan and Erin's wedding
3. Working out so I don't die when volleyball starts
4. Watching the Olympics and hanging out at home
5. Seeing Jenny (best friend from home)
6. Being back at school (living in one place for more than 2 weeks)/Volleyball
7. Crossings
8. Costa Rica
9. Digesting/debriefing/thinking about everything I did and learned this summer
10. My future (school, job, location, husband, etc.)

Ahhhh im getting so bad at this!
Buuuut it is our last week of CIY!! Julie and I are back in Cleveland, TN after spending an AWESOME week at SIU Carbondale with Eastview. I got to see my brother and the church family that I've grown up with and it was incredible.
I think we are ready to be done. Not necessarily because we are tired of CIY but because we are ready to get on with what is next. I am pumped about getting back to school and being an RA and playing volleyball!

Last week we were in Pennsylvania for week 5. It was great. I love the Northeast...but they really need Jesus up there.

Right now I am getting unpacked in Cleveland, TN for week 6. I can't believe we only have 3 more conferences. Everything goes so fast you hardly have time to think about what is happening to you.

Check this out:

This is the way God put it:
"They found grace out in the desert,
these people who survived the killing.
Israel, out looking for a place to rest,
met God out looking for them!"
God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will.
Expect love, love, and more love!
And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again,
dear virgin Israel.
You'll resume your singing,
grabbing tambourines and joining the dance.
You'll go back to your old work of planting vineyards
on the Samaritan hillsides,
And sit back and enjoy the fruit—
oh, how you'll enjoy those harvests!
The time's coming when watchmen will call out
from the hilltops of Ephraim:
'On your feet! Let's go to Zion,
go to meet our God!'"

That is The Message version of a piece of Jeremiah 31...Julie read it to me once a long time ago and sometimes it randomly pops into my head. We got to go to Crossings (the church I go to in Knoxville) this morning and I had one of those moments where things just felt new again. A moment when God reminded me that He will continually to start over with me and build me up again. And I will resume my singing. I wish I could explain these moments better because they are the greatest. They remind me that I am just a small part of a big story that has already been written. That God already has things figured out...and if things are His will...they are His problem. These are the moments that I, along with the rest of creation, wait with eager expectation...

Even the best fall down sometimes...

Since high school I have always wanted to work for CIY...to help run the conferences and be known among the CIY staff. Welp. That goal was accomplished last week.
I was standing on top of a platform in the middle of the crowd running a video camera during the main session last Thursday. I got dehydrated and just didn't have enough in me.....and passed out. Most people were watching the screen and as I fell off the platform the camera came with... so most people just saw the picture on the screen suddenly pointing at the ceiling. So the camera fell, and I came next. When I woke up people told me I fell on some man (awkward). But two nurses that were in the crowd helped me get out of the auditorium and go to the office to get something to eat. Meanwhile, the guy preaching stopped, the freshman girls I got to know that week were bawling, and I am SO embarrassed.
There is more to the story...but you get the idea. I passed out in the middle of a sermon during CIY while standing over the whole crowd. lol.
Julie and I had not even arrived at the next conference and the CIY staff (that heard about it) were crackin jokes. I am pretty sure that moment topped every embarrassing moment of my life.
hahaha the end.

These are the faces of people I've done life with the past few weeks. Some will be friends for life and some I have already forgotten their names. Sometimes I really hate my job because I build relationships and invest in peoples lives then say goodbye at the end of the week. I have to put their future in God's hands. I have to trust that HE is really in charge here.
Or as a profound facebook bumper sticker puts it(I can't believe I just said that):

God is a DJ.
Life is a dance floor.
Love is the rhythm.
You are the music.