We should all discover our inner-waterfall

​Yesterday, the boys and I took a hike I'd always wanted to take. We hiked up to the top of Crabtree Falls. I was surprised by what I found there.

I guess I'd always thought it was one big fall. What we found, though, as we made our climb, was a series of beautiful falls along the way, some swift and some beautifully slow, all magically connected as the water made its way down the thousand foot mountain.

But swift or slow, the water kept going. No matter the boulders in the way or the unexpected twists in the terrain, the water just kept going.

I thought if a waterfall could be a spirit animal, I'd want it to be mine. Even more, I'd want it to be that for my boys.

If my life was water, I'd say I've lived too much of it as a pond. Trapped within often toxic boundaries - many of my own making. Many not. But always out of the inability to see around them, or over them.

Beyond them.

But in waterfalls, the water just falls.

It doesn't stop to be noticed. It doesn't stop to look to where it's been - it surely never gets stuck there. And it doesn't stop to overthink the way it's going.

It just goes.

I long for that for my boys. Just go. Don't be defined by your memories, good or bad. Don't be defined by your culture. Surely don't be defined by me. Be defined by your inner-waterfall.

There is a spirit within us all that is guiding us. Over and through every boulder, around every turn and down every fall we can't even begin to see, it is guiding us.

And if we listen, we are never falling, we are only going.

That's the beauty of a waterfall.

It can be the beauty in us. A beauty I'm so grateful to discover more each day. A beauty I was so grateful to feel at the top of a hike I've long wanted to do.