Good Morning!!!! At 3:30am!!!  I was wide awake and apparently the message for my love letter today couldn’t wait until I was ready to drink some coffee and think about it. Nope! There it was, in the form of a spider web…built with perfect precision, stretched from one post of our deck to the next. Each strand was perfectly and symmetrically woven and was just so exquisite, expansive and beautiful. The fact that the spider wasn’t in the picture made it so much easier for me to admire it.  In the picture, given to me, before the sun had even given thought to being born this day, the web was covered so delicately in frost and the sun gave it the glint of diamonds and I couldn’t stop looking at it…it was breathtaking.

Now, mind you, on any given day, if I’d see a huge spider web stretched between the posts of our deck…anywhere near our patio chairs I’d have taken the broom to it…sparing it not a thought. And if I’d found the artist spider in it, on it, or around that web, I’d have relocated it to the woods behind our house. Seriously, not a fan of spiders or their webs.  

Yet, here I was, in the wee hours…wide awake, in the dark, being as quiet as possible (I didn’t want Chico to think it was time to get up)  trying to quiet my mind…suggesting that maybe later I’d be more receptive of whatever the message was. But that’s when I “heard” it. Not in a voice or anything…rather, a thought that was being insistent that I try to define it, in words. And it continued to repeat the message by showing me pictures, urging me to play with words, until I guess I must have gotten it right.  I felt that sweet relief of drowsiness and knew that I was soon going to be back in dreamland…my last thought was that I hoped I’d remember all of this. After all, I’d certainly worked for it.

So, here it is….it’s about the beauty of the ordinary. It’s about how we all can walk right by or walk around some of the greatest treasures that were actually put there for us to enjoy. It is about how we need to be looking for the beauty of everyday things…expecting to find them. And it’s about how we should be ready to try…even just a little, to unearth the gifts that are hidden everywhere we look for them. Like the beauty of hard work in the form of neatly stacked towels…like the colors of the brightest rainbows hidden beneath the years of dust and grime on old stained-glass windows. It’s the sparkle of clean floors after just a bit of elbow grease. When a gentle breeze blows the leaves around and arranges them in the corners, it’s the smell of the earth that reminds us that it’s great to be alive and those same corners, when the leaves have been raked and removed remind us that leaves fall and die so that new ones may take their rightful place in the sun. It’s the color of a grasshopper, a butterfly, and a bluebird. And, after thinking about it, I have to admit that even some spiders are truly beautiful. It’s the smile on your face and the soft breathing of a sleeping child. It’s a life that is saved from another that’s been lost. It’s the love that we share, any way that we can. It’s about taking the time that has been given to us to be grateful for the beauty that is all around us.

Maybe it’s by sharing what you find in the beauty that lives just beneath.