The Beauty In Autumn

Many people see Autumn as a dreary, depressing season.  The days feel shorter, it gets dark earlier, the leaves fall and the plants die.  It's colder, we have to pack away the shorts, tank tops, capris and flip-flops to make room for sweatpants, long sleeved flannel shirts, warm shoes, boots and hoodies.  Most people bemoan the coming of October and this season of dying off.

I, always being the odd woman out, couldn't be more opposite.  

I LOVE Autumn.  

I haven't always felt this way, but over the last 10 or so years, something has switched over in me and I simply adore autumn.  

I love everything about it.

Cooler temperatures, changing and falling leaves, fires on chilly evenings, hot cocoa and snuggling under a blanket, roasting marshmallows, candy corn, sweaters, hand knit socks, scarves, pumpkin patches, pumpkin spice EVERYTHING!, rosy cheeks and chilly noses, Thanksgiving, caramel apples, the smell of fall baking.

But there's more, much more to it than all that.

I never feel more alive, more optimistic, more full of promise than I do in the fall.  The sunlight always seems brighter, the world more vibrant, more...alive somehow.  

I know, it sounds strange in a season where everything is dying off and preparing to hibernate for the winter to feel alive and full of promise.

I feel that it's more of a time to recharge.  To slow down.  To be remade.  To remake what has become worn and broken.  The earth uses fall as a season of rest; vegetation dies off so the roots can recharge and rest before the spring season of growth.  I see this also as a time of sloughing off what has become old, unuseful, worn and broken within ourselves.  It's a time for slowing down.  A time for looking inward, for making room for new growth to take root and bloom.

We all receive gifts from God, whether we know it or choose to acknowledge them.

I think one of my gifts is seeing the life in the dying, the renewing of the old, the beauty in the waning.  

And for that, I am most grateful.