Grand Canyon--Rim to Rim

Last week I had the opportunity to hike the grand canyon with some amazing women. It was quite the adventure. It was probably one of the hardest physical things I've ever done in my life. I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I can do hard things...and if I can possible do this then maybe I can make it through this life with the heartache and pain I feel each day. It was extremely hard to say the least. Our intentions were to hike from the south rim of the grand canyon down into the grand canyon and come out on the north rim. It's around 19 miles with some steep ups and downs. One of the girls we were hiking with got heat exhaustion and that delayed us some so we ended up not doing it all in one day and spent the night at the bottom of the grand canyon beneath the stars. It was beautiful but not what I really wanted..my own bed. We all slept (layed there) on a huge rock until 3:15am. We then got up and started our hike out the canyon. The north rim ended up being closed to cars and that's a whole other story to how we got picked up. There were many prayers offered and answered that day. Anyway, it was beautiful with waterfalls and different rock formations. I'm so grateful for what I was able to see and experience. I'm grateful for this adventure and the things it taught me.

There was a lot of analogies I could think of while I was hiking and the one I kept thinking of was how this hike was so much like life. It was dang hard! Along with the hard there were beautiful things to look at and it was up to me to see those things. Sometimes I had to have someone point out the beautiful things and many times I had to look up to see the beauty because it wasn't right there in my face. Much like life...sometimes we have to seek and search and sometimes people have to point out to us the beauty in this life. Which has been a difficult thing for me this past year.
At the moments when my legs hurt and it was hot and hard and I didn't know if I could continue on I had to think to myself one step at a time...I am one step closer to finishing this. I think that a lot of the time with my daily life. One more day is one more day closer to Wyatt being in my arms and for our family being complete again. As the steep hills would come it reminded me of this past year and how hard it truly has been but as I've taken one day at a time with no expectations for that day I've been able to make it through the year. I continue to feel like I'm climbing one of the hardest mountains of my life as I try to figure out how to live when Wyatt isn't anymore. I continue to take it one day at a time. I'm now trying to learn how to enjoy the journey...like I tried on this hike.
I'm so glad I was able to do this hard thing to prove to myself that I am capable of doing hard things and I will end at the top. I can look around at my life and find those beautiful things in it...sometimes that is very difficult but if I look hard enough there is always something there(my kids and husband and many wonderful and kind people in my life and much more.) At the bottom of the grand canyon there were butterflies everywhere. I had my Wyatt moments all day long. It was really neat.

The amazing group of women I spent 3 days with.