This past weekend I had the opportunity of escaping into the great Alaskan wilderness. One of my favorite things in the whole world is backpacking. I love trekking to a spot in the middle of nowhere carrying on my back the bare necessities of life. They say home is where the heart is. If that’s the case, then I definitely found in 
This morning I am grateful for family. My sisters and I had a sleepover last night. 
I feel so blessed that God created this beautiful gift for us to fight life’s battles together with. There are hard moments, I can attest to that. But in this moment, my heart is full of gratitude for the good times that overflow enough to make the hard times disappear. 
Yesterday I went for a bike ride. I brought my camera along to capture the beauty of my favorite season…autumn. The vibrant colors of the leaves and plants were incredible. I loved watching the wind blow the leaves through the air. I found a spot on the trail where I was hoping to capture the dancing leaves. The wind was still. I sat there for a long time, just waiting for the wind to pick up. Nothing. I grew impatient and decided to take a shot when the next biker rode past and made the leaves on the ground blow. Nobody came. Finally after waiting too long, I looked across the bike path and saw this pond in the woods. I walked over and saw a beautiful reflection of the scene I was surrounded by. 
To me, the vantage point from the still water pond was better than leaf dancing. I took a moment to embrace the beauty and snapped several shots. As I rode my bike home, I thought about how I kept waiting for the wind to create a beautiful scene for me, when there was already beauty waiting to be captured in the stillness of the pond. Then I thought to myself how I often get so focused on something that I miss the beauty that is already inherently apart of life. I feel that all too often in life, we scramble to find or create meaning through some means outside ourselves…or we just sit around waiting for it to arrive on our doorstep. However, true meaning and beauty is found when we take a moment to step off the treadmill of life and appreciate the small and simple things. In this moment, I am grateful for the lesson I learned from the stillness of a pond.
