Shine Bright Like a Diamond

So my life went on hold in April. Trial came and just completely wreaked havoc. As only trial can. Ask any litigator. The best comparison I can give to non-lawyers is that trial is like finals week and all the stress crammed into one day, every day, over and over. It's physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting. Anyways, here is a post I started while in trial and finished today:

Winter has kept hanging and hanging on around my home. We typically get one big last blast of cold in March, perhaps one in April and then we steady warm up until our summer months where our climate is a cross between a convection oven and a wet sauna.

This winter continues to amaze me. After record breaking SNOW DAYS, we have continued to have little bursts of winter. We had another snow storm, this time, the snow did not stick around for too long. We have had a couple of bitterly cold evenings and mornings. In the midst of all this, spring has steadily charged forward. A few weeks ago, trees started blooming. Tulips poked their beautiful little heads of the dirt. Daffodils started peeking. And most importantly, the Bradford Pear trees are blooming. These trees always create a beautiful white reminder that spring and summer are coming and that we are drawing to a close of winter times. We have many of these trees in our neighborhood and around town.  The City lined our main freeway with these trees and one of my favorite things is to see the long lines of fat white flowering trees during these weeks in the spring.

Last week (mid April ), Jack Frost showed up again. Despite all the beautiful flowers and flowering trees…we got hit by a blast of the cold weather…again. One day, we got a lot of rain and freezing sleet. And more rain and more sub freezing temperatures. And then it rained some more.

When the storm hit, ice covered everything.  Streets, cars, street lamps and those precious beautiful flowers of spring. This storm risked killing off a lot of what we had waited so very long for.

 

This storm coated every leaf, berry, petal and flower in a thick layer of ice.

The day of the storm was dark and cloudy. There was no light coming in from the thick heavy blanket of clouds. That evening, I put my boys in their warmest fuzziest pajamas.  The next morning, we knew spring was back. The breeze was cold but there was warmth in the air. And the sun came out very bright.

I left my house, rushing around like usual. I got in the car to drive to work. In order to leave my house, I drive east, into the sunrise.  Rarely does anything in this world cause me to gasp. Or render me speechless.  

The rising sun hit the trees. The trees covered in white blooms and ice. And it looked like suddenly someone had placed millions maybe billions of sparkling diamonds all around me. The trees, the grass, the sky. It was bursting with the light of sun through the ice.

When it hit the white blossoms of the pear trees, the light was so bright and blinding that it positively took my breath away. I tried to get the baby to pay attention, but at five months old, in his rear facing car seat, I really couldn't get him to appreciate it.

 

 

 

Sometimes the stars align and you get the opportunity to see something magical. It was utterly, completely and totally impossible for me to capture the affect of the sun that day.  With my wee little iphone camera and my insane trial schedule and my busy day, I just had to try to commit it to memory. I have honestly never seen anything like it.

Sometimes this world of ours provides us the opportunity to witness beauty that cannot be captured in words or through pictures. And it is in those moments I get a glimpse of divinity so far beyond myself that I know God exists, eternity is real, and there is more to life than we will ever know.