Walking through the Woods

This evening I walked through the woods around our house.  While I was walking I turned my youversion app on to listen to the book Mark in the Bible.(Isn’t it amazing that we can listen to the bible any time we want)  As I was walking, listening to the scriptures I was overwhelmed in the moment.  Life can be so crazy at times and it can sometimes feel as if we were walking through a forest.  Just like my walk today, I would move around trees and step over thorny vines trying to keep my balance and focus on what was in front me all at the same time.  It would seem as if this coordination would be stressful, yet for some reason it’s actually extremely relaxing.  At the same time that I am focusing on where and how I move through the woods, I’m not worried about all the stresses of everyday life that will return when I head home.  The older I get, the more this reality sets in.  We’re not guaranteed tomorrow and we’re not going to have perfect days every day.  There are going to be mornings with headaches and afternoons spent chasing our deadlines followed by evenings of worry and regret that we may not have captured the day like we had planned.  I use to live every day as if it were a fairy tale.  Really, that was my expectation.  If there was something wrong, it would end in a happily ever after and if I needed a super hero, he’d come to the rescue.  It took getting into some real situations and getting around real people to knock me off my pedestal and make me realize that happiness isn’t found in fairy tales; it’s found in life.  Real life isn’t always going to be perfect; if it were, it wouldn’t be life.  But with that reality, comes true happiness and contentment found in real situations.  I may not always have breakfast ready for my husband before his feet hit the floor, but my husband knows that my heart yearns to please him continuously in so many ways.  He may not come home to a clean house everyday but he will come home to a wife that’s happy to have him home and content to sit on the couch and watch TV together.  When I look back on the last 20 or so years, my happiest moments weren’t found in the “tailored situations”(situations controlled and manipulated to be perfect).  My happiest moments were when I achieved goals after working really hard to get there or looking into my groom’s eyes and saying yes after the two of us spent years working on our relationship, figuring out if we were willing to commit the rest of our lives to one another.  There will never be a time when the hard times stop.  The work will always commence and the stresses will always rise but it’s in those moments that’s when we’re suppose to close our eyes and bow our heads and pray.  Just like my walk in the woods.  With the hard moments there will be moments of peace.  Peace that only our Savior can give us.  He can place His mighty hand on your heart and his presence in your soul and make the stress fade away even if only for a moment.  So as we move through life, trying to step in the right direction and steer away from temptations, we can know that at the same time God is willing to give us peace and carry the worries for awhile.