Every Season Has Its Blessings

Posted on by stilllearning2b

My plants look tired. The once-green foliage has become yellowed from the demands of growth amidst the heat of the summer. Many of the blooms have gone, leaving only the bare stalks as a reminder of the previous bounty. Even the trees look weary, their spotted and pock-marked leaves dulled before they take on the brilliant hues of autumn.

I always feel a restlessness along with a surge of energy around the changing of the seasons. In my area of the country, each chapter in our trip around the sun overstays its welcome by just a few short weeks. And then it bows out, leaving the door open for the next visitor.

Of all these shifts, the slide into fall is perhaps my favorite. I love the crispness in the air, at first only hinted at through early morning breezes before the heat yet again dominates the day. I delight in those few days where a cold wind rustles the changed leaves, blowing them around like the bills in a money-grabbing booth at a fair, all under the still-warm sun.

I love the turning inward that naturally occurs as the temperatures drop and the days shorten. It’s a season where we cast aside the grand gestures and events of summer for more intimate and cozy affairs. It is a time of open windows with roaring fires. Of goosebumps over still-exposed skin with a warm mug nestled between the hands.

I see fall not as a shutting down, but as a necessary slowing down. A time to exhale the pace of summer and breathe in the richness of the season. It’s a time for gathering and preparing. For taking stock and making plans to survive the winter and celebrate the upcoming spring.

Every season has its blessings.

And that is true in our lives as well.

Divorce often heralds in the onset of a sudden and harsh winter. There is a dearth of shelter and the ice threatens to permanently encase your heart. The nights seem to grow until they touch each other, leaving only the barest glimpse of light between.

But what of the blessings?

From Winter Does Not Have to Mean Discontent:

The end of a marriage reminds me of a winter landscape.  All is laid bare.  The adornments and filigree are gone, leaving the structure exposed to the biting wind.  Its beauty is found in perspective.  In appreciating the rough nature of the bark, showing its scars and wear.  In gazing at the complexity of the interconnected branches in wonder.  In seeing the potential in every limb, every bud.  In imagining the new growth, just barely hidden below the surface, that will be revealed by the touch of the warm sun.

The winter of a marriage is also a time for viewing the underneath, what is left when all the distractions are stripped away.  It is a time to see yourself, your marriage, as it is, not as it may appear.  It is also a time to daydream about what can be and what can grow.

It’s so easy to become impatient with where we are and gaze longingly at where we want to be. There is nothing wrong of dreaming about spring even as winter sets in. Yet peace comes from accepting where you are and recognizing the blessings found within the season you find yourself.

Every season has its blessings.

Seasonal

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I grew up in South Texas, which basically has two seasons: “knocking on the gates of hell” (where you risk 3rd degree burns just by simply going barefoot)  from about March to October and “I can wear jeans without suffering heatstroke,” frequently called “winter” by the rest of the country. Occasionally, a third season makes a brief appearance when the region receives five years worth of average rainfall in five hours and the interstates turn into swimming holes.

I never really understood seasons as a kid. Fall was marked by the start of the school year and the appearance of jack-o-lanterns (which usually looked as though they needed sunsreen and a fan) rather than by any real drop in temperature. Instead of arriving on the wind in a series of brisk cold fronts, the temperatures slowly seemed to moderate. The lows became a little lower and the highs seemed to struggle to reach their apex before the sun set. Winter was defined by the addition of Christmas lights and luminarios to the fronts of the houses, projecting a cozy ambiance even when you’re in shorts. The deciduous trees held stubbornly to their leaves until spring, when the new growth pushed off the old. Spring, a sign of renewal and life in much of the world, is the season of caterpillars and tree dropping in South Texas. At least until the temperatures grow too hot again for the trees to even bother with such things as leaves.

There were benefits to growing up without seasons – you could camp during fall and winter breaks, a winter coat was an indulgence rather than a necessity, and we used to have “heat days” off school when it was too hot for the busses to run. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for nature’s reminders of the inevitability of cycles and the impermanence of life.

I am now on my fifteenth autumn in Atlanta. And today marks the first day where fall is carried on the breath of the wind through the trees. I celebrated this morning with pumpkin pancakes and a pair of new running shoes.

There’s a slowing, a sense of turning inward, that accompanies the fall. I associate it with reading and cooking and hiking and writing by an open window. I’ve always felt a rebirth in the fall, perhaps because it marks the end of the intense heat and humidity that often terrorizes Atlanta towards the end of the summer. It’s literally a breath of fresh air.

I have fallen in love with the full expression of each season found here. I enjoy the sense of inner nurturing and scaling back in the autumn, the gatherings around the hearth in the winter, the strength of life in the spring and the pure exuberance of the summer. Just as one tires, the next moves in.

I love the reminder that change is inevitable and that every transformation has its own beauty.

And I also appreciate the fact that I can wear jeans in September without succumbing to heatstroke:)

Happy fall, y’all!