I always felt the shadows.
The chill of autumn always felt colder to my soul than to my bones.
But it wasn’t just the cold. It was the light.
At the first leaf I saw wave goodbye to summer, I felt an ache inside. A nauseated, physical ache that felt like a broken heart.
For I knew the darkness was coming. Those days when the sun wouldn’t shine, and the night would come sooner, and the bitter cold would bite.
Those unnatural months of rising in the dark, when the earth seems to say “Keep sleeping,” but the world is waiting for you to be somewhere by eight.
Ever since my teenage years, it was those days that most rumpled the pages of my Bible. Sent me searching for the face of real Light. Reminded me of the world’s empty promises—for in the end, no matter what we do, death will come. It will come to us all.
But I turned to my Bible. I knew its secret.
That Christian’s aren’t buried, they are planted, to one day spring forth with new life.
Like bulbs. Like the red and white tulip bulbs I planted on Saturday.
In-between the hours of autumn rain there was a window. An hour or two of blue sky and warmth. And so I hunted out my gardening gloves and spent half an hour chatting with the earthworms. Digging holes and tucking those glossy white bulbs into the earth. Imagining the colour they will one day bring.
And I don’t feel it as much this year.
The shadows, they don’t seem as dark.
Even though it’s getting on now—nearly November.
But there are days left ahead. Days of colour. Days of mild coolness and sun.
And I’m taking pictures.
Recording blessings.
Eating donuts and apple cider every chance I get.
And when I feel that little ache, that unsettled ripple in my soul that says, “You’re missing something. You’re not getting it quite right,” then I know. I know I have to rumple some pages again. I have to stop and listen to the voice that whispers through the trees, and through the breeze, and through the harvest, “Listen. Listen. I am the Light!”
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Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
~ James 1:17
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Autumn Ambience to enjoy with your morning cup of tea…
happy little sigh 