The brisk wet air filled my lungs this morning, begging me-in a quick shock-to look around. I wandered outside with the slight pressure of my backpack slung over my shoulder. With the sun not quite over the horizon, and in the stillness of the cool fall morning, I was sent into reflection. As I got into my car I noticed how the leaves seemed to be clinging to their limbs, even though their color showed the inner conflict of end and beginnings. A transcendental reminder of myself, my thoughts, and my own season.
Fall always seems to draw out my inner contemplator (whether self-contemplation, contemplation for friends, or even the world.) in a way that always catches me off-guard. Especially in this season of life. My existence externally seems settled: my schedule normalized, socially comforted, really just textbook settled. Although I can feel the inner stirring of the death of a season, and it in and of itself can be unsettling. Looking back over the past six weeks, I can see the abrupt nature of change in my life, in good and bad ways. I’ve been overwhelmed by love, rocked by truth, hurt by self-expectations, but also seen the promise of grace fulfilled over and over-in a way that has truly altered me. I’ve felt this fabric of change shimmering especially in the last week or so. My typical peaceful edges of existence have subconsciously sharpened, maybe even become jagged: emotions more tumultuous, relationships seemingly more strained, my vision less bright and more dim. Its taken self-contemplation to diagnosis these symptoms of an inner season change. Death to what was, but in that a promise of cultivation and new growth. I don’t enjoy things that I can’t control, as depicted above, my whole being fights it like an unwelcomed infection, but I know it’s time to invite the newness in, even if it seems at first icy and cold / not comfortable or easy.
Even the leaves, after all their years and experience of death and promised life, cling on to the remembrance of a season. They’re forced into submission of the approaching season by gravity, wind, rain, storms etc, and while falling may be terrifying, they’re always promised the growth of a new season (even if death has to occur). I too find myself clinging, but because of the truth of promised time and proper care, its time. Time to drift, float, fall, into submission. For this new season is good, it is promised, it is established, and He is waiting: beckoning. Just as gravity beckons the leaves to drift from their old fashionings, so will I.
Cheers to this new season,
Landon
“And, if not, He is still good.” - Daniel 3