Minnesota, March, and 70 degree weather are not usually found in the same sentence.  Tomorrow the forecast is predicted at 78.  Today the ugly spring crushed me with it’s full power.  It felt great.

I lost spring last year to grief.  I don’t recall one memory of the overwhelming joy or hope that spring usually holds.  I think this lack of last year’s season is what made today so intense.  It was this intensity which brought to my attention the ugliness in spring.  Spring, in the very beginning moments, isn’t beautiful through sight.  Dog messes hidden by snow are now beginning to beg attention.  Trees still completely bare, without the frost of winter to give them sparkle.  Lawns are brown and matted down.  Yards are littered.  Roads are covered with sand and salt.  Today didn’t look beautiful … today felt beautiful.

The beauty of Spring is the power it holds in our experience of it, and it is not all found through the lens of our vision.  I praise a God who can make ugly and create one of the most treasured experiences of living on Earth.  The cycle of new life.  Now that is a reason to be thankful.

The beauty is in the smell of spring.  It’s in the hope it congers up inside us.  It’s the sounds of kids playing in their driveways.  The chatter of the neighbors who haven’t seen one another in months.  The birds returning to their nests.  It is the wind and the sun beckoning us with their warmth and playfulness.  It’s all of these things that call to us; they tell us that we have survived.  Survived another cycle of death and rebirth.  We have done it and summer is going to return.

Beauty isn’t just about what we see, it is about what we experience.  God doesn’t only give us hope in the expected, but in the unexpected.  Spring is proof that childlike joy still exists in every heart.  Beauty, hope, and joy … all found at the beginning of the ugly spring.