Thoughts from my Hike

I'm exhausted, but today was a great day! I went up to Mt. Lemmon(a local mountain) to explore and read and just get away from the heat! It was a lot of fun. It was good to just get away from all kinds of distractions and just spend time thinking and reading and praying. And it was great to just be amazed at God's creation! I have some pictures that I will try and post later this week.

I was walking a long towards the end of the trail I was on and it was fairly steep and almost road like, straight up. I was thinking about how this was a lot harder cause I had to sit there and stare at that long road that seemed to keep going forever where as earlier the road twisted around so I didn't have to look at it the whole time. It made me think about how God doesn't show us the whole path because we would be more likely to get discouraged seeing all the hard parts. But He gives us just what we need for that time to get us through, a little bit at a time. And even though I don't like it sometimes, I want to see the big picture, in reality it is good for me to only know that little part.

While I was walking along this part I also thought about how much more focused on the road I was and less focused on everything around me. Before when it was easy, it was easy to look around and notice God's creation. But when I was on the harder part, I forgot to look around. It is the same way in life. When life is easy, I'm God about noticing how God is working, but when life is complicated, I tend to focus only on that.

Then I thought, maybe I should have gone back the way I came, on the nicer road instead of going around the loop to this harder part. But then I realized, my favorite part of the hike, this big rock with an AMAZING view was on the hard part. If I had gone back the easier way, I would have missed it. Once again, life is the same way, often it is through the hard times that I learn the most and am the closest to God.

And one more much less spiritual thing I learned, I really do hate wearing shoes! I love my flip flops! I wore real shoes for the hike and it was soo freeing to be able to take them off and put my sandals back on. Good thing I live in AZ and only end up wearing shoes for about one month out of the year.