Thoughts on fall

Views from my childhood home!

     I have always loved fall with the cool, crisp air. I love wearing jeans and hoodies again.  Every year as fall arrives I have the urge to pack my stuff and head to college; the college that my memory has created. You know, the return to seeing and living with all your closest friends. The possibilities that lay ahead! That is the college I long to  return to when the air turns cool and the days get shorter. Ironically, as a teacher post college I dreaded the start of another school year.  The filling out of applications to find a job and the stress of not finding one. I think substitute teaching was my least favorite job ever!! I conefess that sometimes , when the phone rang at 6am every morning, I couldn't even bear to answer it. I couldn't face another day as a substitute!  The teachers I had gotten to know always called me the night before to tell me they had requested me, I didn't mind their classrooms.  I knew the kids, schedule, and school so I always took those calls! It was the fall right before my aneurysm that I kind of sensed God was up to something, though I would have never imagined the story He would write! Totally frustrated, I decided to take a semester off from my Master's program and I took a job at a small newspaper doing their classifieds! What I thought was just a short period of time to refocus, turned out to be a life changing year!
     Our worship leader Sunday, spoke words that I quickly jotted down so I wouldn't forget them.  This is the gist of what he said, "God tells the trees to change and they do immediately, dropping all of their old leaves. When God tells us to change, are we that willing?" So, there I stood all teary eyed and pondering.  I thought back to 2005; the year of change, big change, total and sudden change.  I was not so willing as the trees.  No, I spent everything I had left trying to "prove" I hadn't changed.  I was sure I could convince therapists I didn't have a BRAIN INJURY!! If I had had the energy, I would have fought it kicking and screaming (ok, maybe I tried it a few times but I had NO filter then. Now I just have just a broken one!) Oh, silly tree scared to loose your pretty leaves! Then I started to think about a tree loosing its leaves.  What was left of it was a bare trunk, the core of who it was, exposed against the realities of the coming fierce, cold season.  Those pretty leaves couldn't save it from the reality of winter and would perhaps zap it of all the energy it would need to stay alive, to survive! Drop your leaves you silly tree. They are indeed a part of you. For a season they help to identify you.  But, the core of who you are will survive and when the winter passes, new leaves will form and you will identify yourself with them once more. The new leaves will look much like the old ones but they will never be exactly the same, maybe they will be even thicker the next year, as your trunk grows stronger, and your roots go deeper, through the fiercest season. Let go silly tree, just LET GO! 

There can be beauty in the process of change!

This tree, in my current yard, is a good listener!