Trading Adversity For Abundance
Orange you ready for fall/autumn?
Ugh.
Ok that’s corny.
You know, as in Indian corn! I can’t help myself!
I hauled out my orange shoes and am starting to get a craving for – you guessed it- candy corn!
Corn aside, it’s safe to say autumn’s here. Tiptoe across a blanket of butterscotch leaves if you’re lucky enough to live where the seasons change. Inhale the heady aromas of pumpkin lattes. Put on a simmering pot of spices and fill your home with notes of nutmeg and cinnamon. Set your DVR for the Hallmark love stories with an autumn flair. Curl up on the couch for a viewing party. Gently cradle your mug of hot apple cider as you gaze at the vermilion persimmon trees on the screen. So what if the temps are still in triple digits!
A season of atrophy
Shocking isn’t it, how romanticized a season of atrophy and eventual demise can be! When you peel away its veneer, autumn is the death knell of summer. Plants and trees bid adieu to lively green leaves. Fall also steals a little more sunlight every day. Suddenly, it’s dark in the late afternoon. Aromas of suntan lotion give way to pumpkin spice. Kids pack away swimsuits and lemonade stands, saying goodbye to summer freedom and hello to homework. And yet after scores of dog day summer afternoons, we sense we must let go of one thing for another to take its place.
Endings throughout history have forever brought new beginnings. Some are totally unexpected. Eve ate the apple as recorded in Genesis and the death of paradise ensued. It could not have been something she fully understood or saw coming. The events of 9/11 brought an unexpected end to the notion that protection against terrorists could be taken for granted. When Jews and compassionate bystanders learned of the collapse of the Third Reich during WWII, that goodbye was a welcome relief to most of the world. Abolition of slavery proved a welcome end to injustice and suffering.
Our own lives are full of mini autumns.
We endure seasons of loss in our lives. The onset of an empty nest might result in a twinge of regret or sadness. I hugged my oldest son’s childhood bunny with the loved off fur every day for a week after he left for college. Losses like the decline of an aged parent’s mind smart in a different way. New life and hope don’t appear readily evident. Mini autumns rise in our troubled skies like the fiery pumpkin of a morning sun.
I remember the first mother’s day after my mom died just two months earlier. As I entered a department store that May, I noticed the many promotions for the upcoming holiday. It hadn’t anticipated that. Signs with flowers brimming with life and mothers very much alive. The hard reality that, for the first time, I would not be selecting a gift for mine was a sucker punch to my gut. I was, however, able to turn that experience into a powerful blog about love and loss. Writers, like artists, tap into their pain, creating poignant art. This helps us work through feelings regarding autumns we’ve weathered. Many paintings and sculptures or in literary, music, film, or stage works serve as both therapy for the artist and blueprint for those sojourning through their autumn season.
My expiration date
I’m actually in the literal autumn of my life right now. Just turned 60. Getting closer to my expiration date. The milestone brings about the death of feeling youthful, even if ads try to tell you that 60 is the new 45. Ha! It’s easier than even to feel invisible in a crowd of young people. Believe me, it’s no fun being called ma’m more often than being asked for your ID. Pretending that you’re not getting older feels inauthentic, especially with one face lift behind me. But part of facing the inevitability of any autumn involves an honest assessment of death and inevitable rebirth.
For almost two decades, I was stuck in between autumn and winter. Facing mountains of disappointments as my special needs child missed milestone after milestone resulted in the worst kind of “seasonal adjustment disorder.” Remembering God’s promises continues to release me from the imprisonment of acute disappointment. God promises to restore ”the years the locust has eaten (Joel2:25.) Believe me, the field‘s been laid bare. But God’s promises are as true today in the bare field as they were when scribes etched on parchment thousands of years ago.
One of the hardest things
One of the hardest things about powering through an autumn in your own life is finding the balance between enduring the present and eagerly waiting for tomorrow. For me, pondering the mysteries of the corpse flower helps. It’s a true metaphor for the in between. This stinky, fast growing posy only blooms for a short time. It gives off a foul odor similar to that of a rotting carcass or rotting meat. Even though it smells like death and won’t live long, it’s very much alive. This got me to thinking. When I’m faced with the death of something in my life, do I face the inevitable? Or do I resist what God wants to end even as He brings me to the threshold of a new beginning?
Something more happens when we truly die to ourselves
Are you willing to decline the call you’ve made on your own life and make the call to God? Are you anticipating and thanking him in advance for the great and mighty things He is ready to show you in a rebirth? Will you be willing to make an autumnal offering every day and let the branches of our desires let go of those leaves to make room for His? Partner with me in dying to self. We have so very much to gain compared to what we lose.
