How the Unexpected Beauty of Hoarfrost Changed My Day

Never underestimate the power of unexpected beauty to lift your mood and change your day!

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Ephesians 3:20 NIV

A Grumpty Start to My Morning

“Want to go for a walk?” I asked everyone in the living room.

“What’s the temperature,” Pedro asked.

“Seventeen below,” I answered.

He snorted. “I’ll pass.”

“Me, too,” my daughter said.

“Same,” my son-in-law said.

I bundled up and headed outside alone. A pale blue sky and weak sunlight lit the noon-day sky. “Why would anyone want to waste precious daylight hours sitting inside?” I thought.

My rational self argued with my grumpy self. “Rational people stay inside when the thermometer drops below zero.”

Although the scant hours of sunlight in Alaska in December weren’t unexpected, knowing about them and experiencing them didn’t compare.

As I tromped through the deeper snow next to the driveway, I glanced over at the dead rosebushes. Only cheery red rosehips remained of the fragrant wild blooms from the summer. I stepped closer and bent down to see what caught my eye.

Ice crystals formed delicate wings of ice around the berries. I ran back inside and got my camera. My part of Arizona gets snow occasionally, and frost rarely. I couldn’t pass up this unexpected opportunity to photograph the beauty.

After taking dozens of photos of the rose hips, I wandered their yard in search of other unexpected pairings of beauty and mundane. The metal on the bed of their trailer had long wisps of hoarfrost sprouting from the open weave. Stalks of dried grasses sported frost flowers along their stems.

I forgot my earlier grumpy-self-rational-self argument and smiled with delight at each new pairing.

Where Does Hoarfrost Come From?

According to the American Meteorological Society, hoarfrost forms when hoar crystals deposit themselves on freezing objects. The freezing objects usually have a small diameter (such as dried grass stems, tree branches, or wire in a fence). Hoarfrost forms when “air with a dewpoint below freezing is brought to saturation by cooling.”

Weather.com explains the process as water vapor molecules touching subfreezing objects and jumping from a gaseous state (water vapor) to a solid state (hoarfrost).

Whatever the case, the unexpected beauty caused my grumpy mood to jump to a happy mood. The unexpected gift of beauty soothed my ruffled feathers and made me realize how God delights in catching our attention with his beauty.

And once I catch a glimpse of his beauty, I realize my grumpiness has no legs to stand on. After lunch, it warmed up enough for everyone else to join me for a walk through the sparkling world.

Have you ever had unexpected beauty change your mood?