A Touch of Thankfulness.

Have you ever felt the sky above you, really felt it? The rugged rocks beneath your feet and the trees spinning by in a wild dance of leaves and shadows and haunted winds holding secrets they'll never tell you. Have you ever gone hiking? There's something akin to music that seems to spring from the scents of the undergrowth and the rhythm of snapping twigs under your feet.

Yesterday I relearned a lesson I've long forgotten this Summer. I guess sometimes it's just so easy to forget- to miss the fact in all my busyness of living that I'm not doing much more than that. Living, but neglecting letting the life around me -the emotions and beauty and energy- be much more than just a gage by which I can adjust my outward reaction.

I've forgotten to feel. In the craziness of coming home for the Summer and leaving my adventure and working at the greenhouse again... It seemed easier almost to gloss on an "I can do this." face and ignore a heart inside me that was asking for a moment of peace here, and prayer of thankfulness there. Instead all I could remember was that I had left my adventure and these days must be endured before I could return. If I had only realized that even being home was it's own kind of adventure just waiting to happen!

You see, I've relearned that joy is a thing entirely independent of our circumstances. It really is. I believe it's a thing we capture with the eyes through which we are looking at the world around us. Remember that every little wonderful thing in your life is an abundant blessing from God-- and if that's not enough, remember that you have a God who knows you and died for you and loves you so deeply and fully that He's continually orchestrating your life in a perfect symphony of pain and goodness to make you more like Himself.

How can stoicism or dissatisfaction or frustration exist in a soul in which such a wonderful truth resides- spilling over inevitably into extravagant thankfulness?

Yesterday we went hiking. And speeding our way past rocks and trees and forest upon forest I turned my face to the window of the car and watched it all in a rapture. "This is the Canada I love.. This is my Canada." I thought. I cradled a Tim Hortons coffee warm in my hands and let the music coming through my earphones make it's way into my smile, a dance of happy thoughts coming into my silly overthinking brain.
There's nothing much incredible about any of this, it was just a little happy moment, and for it I said a prayer of thankfulness to God.
In fact, I said a lot of them that day.