Hiking

Well, I intended to put up two pictures tonight. However, blogger doesn't seem to be working quite right tonight and the other picture won't upload into the post. I spent this past weekend camping with some friends from college. On Saturday, after spending the afternoon canoeing, I headed out to the trails at Shades. Upon encountering the above trail, I had to make a decision - keep on going or turn around and go back. As you can see, the trail turned into a stream. Honestly, I wasn't too crazy about getting my shoes all muddy again. I have a hard enough time keeping things clean the way it is let along dealing with washing shoes. (My walking partner was just commenting tonight about my phenomenal housekeeping.) However, the allure of the trail was much too strong and my hike continued. It kind of reminded me about my own journey through life. Sometimes I end up at these decision points when the journey ahead seems too messy, inconvenient, or difficult. Sometimes the journey seems too scary or painful. Sometimes the journey seems too filled with questionable choices and insatiable thirsts. Its during those times that we can fall into traps - want to call its quits, turn around, and head back to safety. Last night, I learned about traps that we fall into such as performance, approval, blame game, and shame traps. I am particularly susceptible to a combination of the performance and approval traps. The performance trap says, "I must meet certain standard to feel good about myself." If I don't... fear of failure. The approval trap says, "I must be approved by certain others to feel good about myself. " If I'm not approved... fear of rejection. So this past weekend, I continued on the hike (messy shoes and all) and ended up... (hint: kind of unusual for Indiana)