Bare Branches

by Gail Z. Martin

We don’t get a lot of snow here in the Carolinas, but we can get ice.  I love it when I can see every bare twig and branch glittering with ice or dusted with snow.  All of a sudden, the dry, bare, leafless branches don’t look dead or sad.  They’re alive with light, glittering like diamonds.  Until the temperature rises, all those bare trees that wouldn’t have gotten my attention are suddenly miraculous.  I’m suddenly aware of the stark beauty, the symmetry, the complexity.  Something ordinary and unremarkable is breathtaking because the ice makes me see it as if for the first time.

There are some things in my work and life that I need to re-imagine this year.  Right now, those areas seem as bare and fruitless as the branches of the winter trees.  It’s easy to look right past them.  But the ice reminds me that there is hope and beauty in waiting, and that even things that haven’t blossomed yet are worthy of appreciation for their complexity and promise.  So I will try to take a lesson from the ice and apply it to the “bare branches” in my life.

What “bare branches” do you need to re-imagine this year?

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