Life Lesson Learned: Trust Your Gut

I would like to share with you all an important lesson I learned in life: trust your gut feelings, your intuition, your chi, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost or whatever you want to call it. The important thing is: listen to it.

On Saturday, Karina and I wanted to get away. We decided that because the weather in Utah has been fairly warm that we would go on a hike. I woke up on Saturday morning with a bad feeling. I kept thinking about it all morning and prayed about it, and by the time to leave rolled around, I no longer had a bad feeling and suggested we just go for it. We drove up the canyon, ending at the trail for Stewart Falls. The road is closed straight ahead of this trail, as the rest of the canyon is yet impassable with snow. However, the park ranger reassured us that many people were making the hike today, so we were good to go.



Well...the ranger was right. There were plenty of people out and about hiking. We meandered for about ten minutes, then climbed up the steep incline to begin the actual hike. The trail was solidly snow, in some places well-packed, in some places fluffy and easy to fall through, and in some places, slippery as ice. Despite the slow-going and slippery trail, I felt very blessed by the beauty of God's creations around me.

 

We continued on for about an hour until we reached a major fork in the road. We were blessed to meet a kindly man who told us that if we took the well-paved path that we would end up going about a mile out of our way and having to back track. We were re-directed to the continually narrow trail to make it to the Falls.

Now, I don't know if we're just totally boring and have no sense of adventure, but as we continued along the narrow trail, we did not feel good about continuing forward. We were so close to the falls, but both of us knew that it was not right to go on. First prompting I actually listened to on that hike.

And so we turned our merry selves around and continued back. Or what we thought was back. Turns out that we missed the narrow trail and continued down onto some trails that we had never been before (these are the Aspen Grove trails for anyone that is familiar). Anyway...we quickly realized that we hadn't seen this place before and that we were lost, as we were both sure we would have remembered a sign that said Middle Earth. Well, we had hiked about a half hour away from the main trail at this point, and we had a long, uphill trek to make it back.

Friends, we weren't in any actual real danger. We both had cell phone service. We both had GPS. There were plenty of people coming and going, so we knew that all we had to do was make it back to the fork where we knew we had been before and then wait until someone was coming or going. But I was anxious. I don't like not being in control. I don't like feeling lost. And chanting through my head like the beat of a bass drum was the thought that I should have listened to the "bad feeling" that I had had earlier. As we rushed back, panting as we sloshed and slipped on the snow, I prayed that we would find other hikers and that our uncomfortable situation would end soon.

Surely enough, once we made it back to our spot of confusion, we met two girls that had we had seen several times throughout our hike. Karina spotted the trail again, and we were able to continue back no problems.

I know that this hike was meant to be a learning experience, a teaching moment from my Father in Heaven. When we receive whisperings from the Spirit about things that we should not do, we should listen. Because eventually, Father may just tell us that it's "fine" because we won't take His answer as our own. And that's where trouble begins.

So...moral of the story: 1) listen to your gut, the Holy Ghost, 2) wear hiking boots when hiking through snow and 3) always find yourself a good walking stick.