31 Days :: {8} :: hidden beautiful

Hey there friends! thanks for stopping by! You've found us at Day 8 of my 31 Days series on Celebrating Life. If you'd like to see all the other posts so far, you'll find the introduction here {includes post-list at the bottom} or the posts all here :)

I believe there are such things as tangible beautiful, beautiful moments, beautiful people, and also, hidden beautiful {which I think, actually fits into all the other listed 'categories'}.

When we first moved to our house, a couple years ago, it was a new neighbourhood, a new side of town for us. That meant lots of exploring, and we walked down street after street, trying to find all the parks and soccer fields, and how all the streets fit together. Well one day, after we'd been living here a couple of months, my mother said there's a wetland with paths through it somewhere around here, we are going to go find it. 

And so we did. We ran down a hill at the end of a court, and made our way through a giant clump of birch trees and bushes (actually, my mother found the path, which was on the next street over, but we decided it was more fun to make our way through the woods), into the wetland and onto the path. Oh my goodness it was beautiful in there!

From the edges of the wetland you can see the backs of houses on either side, but in the middle, it's like you're not in the middle of a subdivision. If you know where the paths to get in are, it's easy to tell that the wetland is there from outside of it. But if you don't, and you didn't take the time to look for it, you would never know it's there. 

I think that's like the beauty in life, so often. Sometimes it's hidden within things, like our wetland in the middle of a subdivision, and it takes you looking for it to find it. And once you do it's like there's a whole other world out there. 

Since then, we have discovered a whole bunch of other trails and meadows and such in this neighbourhood, and they are all so very lovely. I can be five minutes away from my house and {almost} feel like I'm in the middle of the country.

I love this wetland. I go running there all the time, I take the little girls walking through there, we look for birds and bunny-rabbits and snails... during each season it is so different and beautiful. It makes me sad to think that if we hadn't gone looking for this beautiful, we might not have found it.  

It's kind of like that silver lining to the clouds... God puts it in there but we've gotta look for it. And sometimes... it's very well hidden.

What kinds of hidden beautiful do you have in your life that you would've missed if you hadn't gone looking for it?

blessings,
love emma


linking up with Chantel and Elizabeth :)