Going to Meet the Day

Somewhere, around twenty years ago, the Bridgewater College Outdoorsman’s Club gathered on the campus green to head out on an early morning hike. While it is difficult to beat the springtime sunrise we had managed it, and though it would be a warm day we shivered in the early morning mountain cold.

Twenty years later and it has been several years since I last hiked and it would be quite the stretch of the imagination to consider me an outdoorsy type of person. I spend most of my days working on this here laptop or trying to figure out new ways to market my business. I am hardly walking through the woods anymore.

Before moving to Virginia Beach I would spend several hours a week simply walking through the woods, but in that time I was trying to escape the city. I was frustrated with the life we had and the one I thought we never would. I couldn’t see my way out of the life we were in and to the one we wanted.

Then we moved to Virginia Beach and ten years later have everything we want. A nice house, our own business, and a loving family, but somewhere along the way pieces of myself fell off. Here we are today where I will not only introduce my children to the joys of walking through the woods, but reintroduce myself.

Something that I once got so much joy from become an outlet to attempt to manage my frustrations. I loved being in the woods, but in that time about ten years ago it become the contrast to my frustration.

This idea of a gratitude journal started as a way to count my blessings each morning and to deepen my connection with God. There is no better way to deepen that connection than to go where God is, and where else would God be but in the midst of creation. We believe that God created the heavens and the earth. The mechanics of that are debated by some but that is irrelevant when we exist in the present moment and appreciate the beauty of the world around us.

The bird sing outside my window. Calling me to great the day. To head into the woods to reintroduce myself to myself, my family to the joy of nature, to greet the day, and to be with God among his creation.