The beauty in the gray

I took this photo last week when we were in Galveston, and of all the photos I took while we were there, I think it’s my favorite. I was looking at it yesterday and I noticed that it looks like I converted a color photo to black and white because it’s all in gray scale. But that’s actually just how the photo naturally looks, all in gray. It’s all in gray because it was a foggy and overcast day, with a dull  dreary sky and no sun in sight. Which, truthfully, is the kind of day I like the least. I’m a blue sky and sunshine kind of girl. 

Days like yesterday, where there’s not a cloud in the sky, and the color of the sky is a blue that you can almost feel. A day where the sun shining on my skin literally feels like the touch of God to me. A day where sometimes I just sit in the car for a few minutes or stand outside before I head in to my office, just to breathe in the air, and feel the sun’s warmth, and savor the creation God made. Just a gift of a day.

But the day I took that photo wasn’t that kind of weather day at all. And so I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about this photo that draws me the way it does. I thought maybe it’s the iconic nature of a boy and his dog. Maybe it’s the pleasure pier in the background. Maybe it’s the contrast of the light of the water against the darkness of the sand. There has to be something that is drawing me to this gray photo. Something other than the gray.  Because, you see, I’m a full color kind of girl.

Then it hit me. Sometimes the days that are gray, the times that are gray, are where the deep beauty lives. Often the gray times are where we grow the most. In the absence of the sun. In the absence of the blue skies. In the absence of the warmth, and in the presence of the cold and the dreary and the gray. And it’s those gray skies, those gray times, that help us to fully appreciate the days with the azure blue skies. With the sun that warms our skin and touches our souls. We take for granted the clear skies without the cloudy ones with which to compare. We take for granted the good times in our lives without the bad. The sunny days are the ones that soothe us. But the gray ones are the ones that form us.

So I’ve decided to make a print of this photo and hang it on my office wall.  Near two other photos I have prints of that both show a beautiful azure sky. So that I can remember that there is beauty too in the gray days. And that sometimes the blue looks a whole lot bluer when it’s up against the gray. But each is beautiful in its own unique way.