This morning I was thinking how my ideas of life sometimes prevent me from embracing the abundance and gifts that life is already surrounding me with.

This is a picture of a hunting cabin I found after walking through blizzards alone for days in the winter of 2013 on the Finger Lakes Trail in New York. I had no food left, I was cold and all I could do was simply experience the reality of what I was experiencing and find peace and solace in it.

I was not hoping for nor expecting to find a cabin with a stove and fire wood in it that day. But when I did my heart broke and I received the gift of it. Watching that fire that evening was one of the most meaningful and memorable moments of my life.

Sometimes it is in letting go of our stories about life, about what we expect, about how life should be that we really meet and open up to the beauty and love that life is already presenting us with.