I just pulled my face out of a pillow to write this and I'm so tired from the last few days, but I need to do this before too much time fills up the space between. Maybe the tiredness will help my thoughts slip out.. I keep relaxing my shoulders but they keep hunching up again until I notice.

Trek is over.
So much happened in the last month of Peru, and it's all still stirring in my head and heart.. I'll have to write more about it later. Earlier today someone asked me if I was jet lagged, not realizing the time change was only 2 hours. I said the time difference wasn't bad, but my heart feels jet lagged.
Debrief went by so fast, I can't even believe it. It was so good to get a little rest, and have some time between tough goodbyes. I wrote my friend who asked me about it that I know I'm no where near done processing all this thats been poured into my life and the changes in me that I'm left to live out, and I'm ok with that now, but I really feel like I can't settle down for another two weeks, when I get back from being a cabin leader at camp for a week. I feel like I haven't re-connected with my world yet even thought I've been back since the 17th of July, I've sort of still put most of my relationships on hold so I can focus a little longer on other things.. which I'm sorry about but I think it's the only way for now.
My sister gets married this Saturday. I've gone straight from the Mark center to her house to live with her and 3 of the other bridesmaids, and I'm fully committed to her this week as maid of honor since I haven't been around for so long. Weddings are so stressful, I'm so glad for Amy that the last few days have finally come and soon she can just enjoy all the celebration and then crash on a beach for a while and recover. The last few days have been so packed, but I've loved spending time with Amy and her other sisters...
So I have yet to see where I will be living in the next year, (my dad's apartment in North Vancouver) and won't be able to until after Charis camp-- more emotional and spiritual intenseness, but I know God will be pouring into me and I can definitely survive on his strength, enough to still pour out on others. And He's been letting me know this week in different ways that He is active and working here too- it's been hard as I've been trying to stay in contact with Peruvian friends and family and hearing about things going on there, and I still feel my heart is there.. and it's been hurting, but I know it needs to be here now and there is a place for me at home too, and that there are so many people worth pouring my life out into... that God has been calling and sustaining and forming, even when I wasn't around.

changing gears.

In Peru God was speaking to me a lot, about dreams. With getting to know so many people's hearts I saw so many dreams and different places in the paths of walking and running after them.. Even just within our team I just loved hearing these things, to see faith in so many different forms and seasons, planted in different places and light, I feel like I could write or paint about all this in a very thick book. I think something beautiful happens when our faith is intertwined in the things we long for a dream about, the visions of hope and higher things that we sometimes open up ourselves enough to have, and to dream with Jesus, even in all the vulnerability and nights of forget and hopelessness. To dream with Jesus. I feel like through out the trip Jesus was sort of tossing all these different seeds and things out there at us, and I wasn't the only one who heard them. They fell from many different mouths. I had a great conversation with Laura about this walking back from Fishtrap Creek.. it was one of those times you only realize something as you're saying it, each word you hear back from your own mouth and it only begins to ring truer as time passes over it being spoken out loud. I don't know why it was so unexpected, but Jesus came and taught us so much about faith, believing, it's like he was flicking off lids of boxes we didn't even know were closed.. we have these moments where some roof suddenly disappears and we realize we can ask "What if.." or "Why not..?" I don't know why it's always so surprising, but we can bring everything to Jesus, he told us that, but so often we don't even think to ask or bother to question why or why not. Why can't we ask for healing? Whatever part of us needs it, no matter how desperately, we just miss that childlike faith that asks.... to see Jesus in all circumstances.. the expressive God who meets us here..
And lately he's made me see it's time for me to dream again. For a long time Trek was my dream, and I sort of looked to that and poured everything into it, and that's ok, but now it's time to move on from that place. Sitting in on a log in the middle of a forest path he showed me it's just like when we sleep. We let our minds relax and let go of being in a control, of making sense.. then we fall into many different dreams easily at night. We are meant for dreaming, I believe that, and I've been telling a lot of people that and seeing that everywhere in so many ways now.. but it's time for me to take my own advice I think. I believe in art.. maybe I'll end up doing art as therapy, with kids who need to remember how to be kids again, victims of war, child soldiers from Cambodia or street kids and young girls who have to deal with traumatic burdens that no one should have to carry, let alone children. There's no shortage of needs for healing. I don't know what's ahead yet, I know it's something big . But still we have to give these things to him or they become burdens too..

It's like when you're learning another language when you listen to God speak something into your life. At first it just sounds like gibberish, you can't tell words apart, but as you catch some of the meaning of a word you begin to hear it everywhere, and it's so surprising that you never noticed it before. You hear it in different contexts and it only gathers more meaning, until you can use it yourself. Weird. And now I need to listen to my body and turn off all these sentences and to-do's in my head and sleep too, and even if I don't remember my dreams I know I let them practice being free at least. Did this make any sense? I really should start reading these things over...
thanks to anyone/everyone who read this and sorry that I enjoy spilling so much.
more pictures later.