Walking the Road to Healing

Today we went on a hike as a family.  I will be honest when these hikes started it was simply an activity that did not cost anything and got Miss M out of the house and moving.  I did not realize the therapeutic benefit, one of the pluses to asking for God's direction and receiving it, obviously he knew the benefit in advance.  But I was thinking about it today as we walked through this amazing place.  We trudge along a dirt path through the woods where we don't see other people or anything but nature and each other.  The noises are of little streams and twigs snapping under our feet and the sounds of each other. 

When Miss M started taking these hikes she was terrified, we thought of creatures in the woods and the unknown, but maybe for a kid that is learning to attach she was afraid of us.  Tromping along with nobody but her family, a RAD kid's enemy.  Maybe those hikes spoke to her in ways words could not.

Little by little over the past year she became more confident, more in sync with her family as she walked along these paths.  Sometimes the 3 year old leads, sometimes Mom or Dad, sometimes Miss M or Big Sis or Mr but it doesn't seem to matter because the point is we are all together and we have this unspoken way of keeping track of each other and making sure each other is in sight and okay.

This moss covered tree root looks like a person laying face down with their arms crossed.

Look at that smile!  We are seeing positive improvement with the new med!

These trees display the evidence of where they were damaged in the hurricanes 5 years ago.

But their little saplings are non the wiser of their trauma.

I love that smile.