“AHHHH! Another inchworm on me!!!”
“I can’t go outside, there are BEES everywhere!”
“ This !@#$ pollen…I’m dyin’, Babe…”
Ah, the sounds of Spring. If the gorgeous image above has you sneezing and itching rather than sighing and rejoicing, then you’re feeling the pain of many of us as we struggle to come to terms with this season.
It seems so unfair that during the most beautiful time of the year, when the world bursts into splendid color and temperatures are ideal, there are so many other things we have to deal with. Bugs. Pollen. These bizarre inchworms I don’t remember before that are hanging from seemingly nowhere, creating a spider web of every parking lot, backyard, or school campus before terrorizing my kids, hours later, as they discover them on their clothes, in their ears, in their lunch bags…
Too bad Spring has to come with so much…life.
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Spring is when everything wakes up, blooms, reproduces, spreads itself around, matures, creates, combines, transforms. Spring is the process of creating life, and it is both exquisitely beautiful and unbelievably messy. Spring is the necessary transition that every living thing must go through in order to obtain sustainability.
Spring is temporary, and nothing in bloom or in caterpillar form will look the same in a matter of weeks, or even days. These things will eventually turn into what they were created to be, but in the meantime, the process can be viewed as either beautiful or an inconvenient, disgusting mess.
This spring, are we going to appreciate the flowers or begrudge the pollen? In our own lives, are we going to appreciate the inevitable transformations, growth opportunities, and transitional periods we all go through? Will we see them as temporary, prompting us to both relish the beauty of it AND have strength to get through the messier parts?
This is life. This is the season we are in. Recognize it, appreciate it, use it. Don’t stay inside and wait for something better to come along later- you and all creation have important work to do. It will beautiful and messy and weird…enjoy the ride, and enjoy the assurance that it’s turning into something fantastic.
Efficient Abundance 
How lovely–and how appropriate. It reminded me of a visitor to Atlanta during the Dogwood Festival, when the entire city was gorgeously in bloom, with the dogwood trees, azaleas, daffodils, and tulips all at their showy best–and he could talk only of the pollen. Though I am constantly awed by the beauty of this world God created for us, I am most especially awed in the spring.