Of flowers... and bedbugs

I'm cautiously optimistic that we may be done with freezing temperatures... it's May 5th, after all! Of course, this IS Minnesota, and the last freeze date is still weeks away, I believe. The grass has just leaped out of the ground, and the spreading green is such a relief to my eyes.

Tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, forsythia, and other hardy spring flowers are showing their sunny faces, and I see tons flower buds on the many lilac bushes in our new backyard. There's a little round flower or herb garden in the middle of the yard that has some mysterious buds pushing up out of the earth, through the overgrown dead grass. Can't wait to see what those are.

Spring is my favorite part of the year, until the mosquitoes hatch out, then it becomes my least favorite. I'm hoping our proximity to the Rum River won't make our property mosquito central. Sometimes it seems with every good thing, there's a little bad to go with it.

I know that the despised mosquito has a place in nature, feeding all those birds, fish, and other wild critters, but do they have to like MY blood so much? I ask myself on those gray, cloudy days when I'm feeling particularly affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder -- not enough sunshine), WHY did God have to create the mosquito? Can't even blame Noah and the Ark for that one, because the flood was mosquito heaven.

And don't even get me started on ticks, leeches, bedbugs, and other ickies that like to feed off us humans. Oh, and in the tropics, you REALLY don't want to know what some creatures do to survive on and IN humans. If you watch Animal Planet, they have some shows that'll keep you awake nights.

But they are all God's creations, just as much as those lovely flowers are, however much I'd like them not to be. They would seem to be the dark spots on God's tapestry of life, the shadows cast by those flowers. As much as we wish they weren't around, they are, and we have to accept that.

That's why I'm so looking forward to a time in the future when "the wolf and the lamb will feed together" (Isaiah 65:25) and not ON each other! Now, the Bible doesn't say this, but I'm assuming, because it also says "the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard... no more," (Is. 65:19) that mosquitoes will no longer want to hunt me down and make me weep into my coffee when I step outside on a sunny June morning.

I'm just hoping that blood-sucking creatures will be happy eating dirt, or whatever other non-living things they can find. OR, horrors, does it mean we just won't care that they still want our blood? I shudder to think about that option. Maybe I'll be like that crazy mosquito biologist who goes into the wild tropics and lets rare mosquito breeds feed on him so they'll perpetuate. That's just... crazy.

Maybe I'm a perpetual pessimist and can't see the flowers without also seeing the bugs and other negatives. Some may say I'm a realist. Whichever it is, I hope I can focus on the flowers and enjoy them while being aware and wary of the other things, the dark spots on my sunny spring days.

Isn't that the essence of a joyful life? Knowing that bad things are here, but able to still enjoy the good things that God has given us. I'm still working on it.

What's your favorite thing about spring? Help me overcome my negativity :-)