We chose to fly to Paris in January and did not regret it once. The weather was comfortable enough to spend every day walking around the city in wool coats, without overheating or freezing.

We returned to Canada, but I kept reliving Paris every time I told stories to friends and family. One of those friends noticed that I brought back a previously unnoticed glow. I thought, perhaps, as my husband noticed, it was because there I was ‘in my element’.

I might sound trivial, but the resemblance between life challenges and forest trails is striking. Unexpected downs, alarmingly steep ups, slippery slopes and branches, dry branches—danger for careless eyes, one cannot rest for a single moment. One had to manage balancing listening to birdsongs and staying on a narrow path, watching sunbeams through the dense canopy of pine and birch trees and considering the stability of rocks under a horse’s feet.

All and all consisted of contrasts that day: milky patches of snow, jade, dense forest, moon about the hills and mountains and fading sunset. How beautiful! Oh, where to find words to describe that reflection of moonlight in the river. Oh divine grace of God, of His artistic heart that created a little man, a little me, and placed in the centre of such days and places as we have witnessed today.