Weekend Part 3 - San Jose to Santa Cruz to San Francisco

So, while driving on the freeway down to San Jose, I suddenly hear loud screaming and honking. I look to the side of my car and there's a girl half way out of the window (with a cowboy hat on) waving her arms, yelling my name, and trying to get my attention. I realize that it's one of my good friends from school who I had lost touch with and didn't have her cell phone number, and she didn't have my new number either. Weirdly enough, I had been thinking about her a ton lately wanting to try and connect. So, I roll down my window and scream my cell phone number out to her. She calls me, and it turns out she's working in the bay area, and we're going out to dinner this week! So great!
After that occurrence, I decided to call one of my friends who was up visiting a camp we both worked at in to Santa Cruz mountains. I knew that she would be up visiting and that she was moving this week to Colorado, so I at least wanted to say my good byes over the phone. Turns out, she was still up at camp (which is pretty close to san Jose), and she convinced me that I should DEFINITELY come up to camp on my way back to SF.
After picking up my wallet, I made my way up the mountain to Ponderosa Lodge. As I drove the familiar drive, I felt a lot of different emotions rushing at me. I guess it was simply the feeling of driving back to something familiar and dear. Kind of like visiting my old college town, or driving home to visit family. Except with Pondy it's a little bit different. Pondy is a place where God has arrived in my heart in ways that have shaped me, changed me, and made me who I am. My two summers at Pondy God has done some serious unveiling of my eyes, breaking of my heart, working at me, softening, telling me that it's okay to stop trying, freeing me, opening me up to teach me how to dance before Him. To me, Pondy is a place of sacred grounds where God is present, and shows up to pursue His people, to love them and love them until it hurts sometimes.
I arrived at Pondy and to put it shortly, was blessed. Was blessed by the amazing people and friends that I worked with in past summers. Was blessed by seeing two of the girls I counseled last summer. Was blessed by the worship, the speaker, and the conversation. Mostly just blessed to feel God richly in my heart, strongly but patiently reminding me, "I'm here, and I still love you." The drive back to SF was good, and now I'm back to work, but I feel refreshed, I feel different today for some reason. God did something in me yesterday, and he used my forgetfulness of losing my wallet to get me to this place.