A few weeks ago, I gathered and placed our fall decor to prepare our home for the changing season. There are familiar decorations I enjoy unboxing that I have collected for three decades from our early married years and into all the growing-up years of our children. I freshened our bedroom with a brand-new pieced quilt with calico fabrics in hues of red, orange, yellow, and brown. Outside, I removed weary annuals that were spent after a summer of showing off their beauty, and I planted fall mums in their place. In a couple of weeks, I will replant tulip and daffodil bulbs with the anticipation and hope of their beautiful blooms next spring. I love autumn. I love everything about this season from warm colors (my favorite), cerulean skies, crimson sunsets, bonfires, football, pumpkins, hayrides, fuzzy blankets, apple cider, and cozy evenings by the fireplace. Autumn is unique, because there isn't another season that really touches on all four of the seasons quite like autumn does. Summery weather lingers for days and sometimes weeks, yet autumn also ushers in the magic of winter. The spring flowers that will be enjoyed were thoughtfully planted many months prior during the early days of fall. The seeming loss and devastation of autumn is also quite unique. My grandson and I read a story today about a little fox experiencing his first autumn. The fox's tree friend was dropping leaves as the worried young fox frantically tried to collect the leaves to give back so the tree could be "fixed." As trees light up in fiery reds, glistening golds, and inferno oranges the beauty of the landscape tapestry is breathtaking, but also fleeting. As wind, other weather, and time strip deciduous trees bare, the contrast from an explosive backdrop of stunning color to stark, gray, and bleak does feel a bit devastating, but a little deeper perspective reveals the gift of autumn- permission to take necessary rest. This is the design of things, even the design of us. The little fox was obviously unable to restore the leaves to the tree. Sometimes we have to surrender and embrace what we are powerless to restore, as well.
What season are you in? We've had some tough recent days and weeks as a country and as a human race. It's a mess around here, friends. I am willing to say, knowing how life is, that maybe you (like me) have had some difficult "closer to home" days, months, and maybe even years, too. When I say I am READY for this next season, I mean that from the soul of my being. Let the leaves drop to the ground, surrender this, (whatever THIS means to you) to the One who made us, and trust Him that there will be some sort of something to make sense of all we are trusting Him for. I don't say this lightly. I usually rebuke things that sound like platitudes, but I know as the uniqueness of fall has shadows of all the seasons, so do our lives. There is beauty in the mess and even if the heartache doesn't make sense, there might be something in another area of our lives that brings joy to balance the way of things. This is how autumn speaks to me this particular turn of the season. I am here holding fast and letting go all at the same time and praying for the trust I need to be in the center of the design of it all. Fall has always been my favorite. I will give myself permission to embrace and even celebrate all the things I love that make me feel warm and cozy in our little corner of the world, while simultaneously holding the sorrow that still needs held. God bless you with grace as you do the same. In their time, let the leaves fall. Sometimes "fixing" looks bleak and gray...but also a little bit like rest.
Always grace,
Shanda
