A Year of Gratitude – May 20, 2024

I found my gratitude in a rainy morning. I grabbed my camera and headed outside. I couldn’t wait to find raindrops waiting for me to capture them.

Usually, I head straight for the flowers. There’s nothing prettier than a colorful flower petal with raindrops clinging to them. The droplet of water intensifies the color. It highlights the tones and just makes it sparkle in the daylight.

I took photos of the iris which have just started to bloom. They were, as expected, just glorious today. I looked through the lens and marveled at just how beautiful they were. And then I looked down.

A smattering of raindrops were perched on the iris’ leaves. They looked too perfect to be real. The drops looked as if someone had been holding a handful of water and sprinkled it over the top of them. Every crease in the leaves, each variation in the green color seemed to be amplified by them.

I was captivated by them. I took a photo and immediately brought it up on screen to look at it. It was as if I was convinced that it wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful as what I had seen. Yet it was. 

There is extraordinary beauty to be discovered in the ordinary if we only choose to see it. Yes, the flowers are beautiful. They get all the attention. But perhaps these leaves have been just as beautiful all along. They’ve been colorful and interesting. I was just too busy looking at the colorful flowers and hadn’t noticed how exquisite they are.

As always, nature has so much to teach me. Too often, we are distracted by the shiny objects in our days. We miss simple pleasures because they aren’t screaming at us to pay attention. There’s nothing wrong with shiny objects or the excitement of something magnificent. But life is full of marvelous wonders that don’t need to sparkle to be beautiful. They’re beautiful in their own way.

Ordinary things really can be extraordinarily beautiful. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when I’m out in the garden looking for beauty tomorrow. I’ll try to remember this lesson the next time I’m looking for kindness and beauty in the world and its people.  I hope that you will too.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.