Each season I seem to find myself in some quiet moment of reflection, paying homage to the season that seems to be taking it’s exit.
Today seems no different. They aren’t scheduled… these moments just seem to creep up on me as if something deep inside me, just needs to stop, drink in the moment and give thanks for all the sweet things the present season has brought with it, and bid ado to the things that have brought with it lessons, that while were and are valuable, seemed to be birthed out of pain and discomfort.
And while I am glad to see those go… I want to stand with them one last time in hopes that I will never have to experience them again, or if I do, that I have learned all that I can from them as to hopes avoid some of their trenches in the future.
After my good-byes, it seems I always find my way to a pen and paper to write down a list of things that I want to accomplishment, and things that I want to conquer, in the coming season.
My lists looks different as I get older. The list now consists for less outward achievements, as I set my sites on more inward chores. For example: family and friends have asked me to stop representing that I don’t love well….so I have promised to do that. I am told that I may not love SOME as well as I may want to, that doesn’t mean I don’t love everyone well…. I am grateful for the clarity. The opposite is true as well, I have discovered; I may not be loved well by some, but I am greatly loved.
Funny how I can get trapped in those lies.
The fall is a reflective season for me, it always has been. I think that there is just something in nature of all living things that before winter comes, makes us take stock. Change the things we can change and let go of the things we cannot. If find myself outside more, snapping photos, hoping to grab a glimpse of whatever it’s secrets are.
As I drove over the mountain passes this weekend with my third son’s amazing and beautiful girlfriend Sam, signs of fall danced all around us… Change was in the wind, and in the trees and….. being that she is a nature girl herself, it was a joy to be in the journey with her, I could see that she too, could hear the seasons calling…. the subtle whispers that warned us, change was indeed in the air. I love that about her.
We had traveled across our state for a bachlorette party for Eme… Son #1’s soon to be bride. They get married this weekend, and all the boys will be home for it. I can hardly hold back the tears of gratitude, for the way our family is growing. The amazing women that are being added. And, how is some divine way, they complete us. It isn’t that they just complete our guys, they complete our family in a way that feels whole. Like we would miss them if they were never there. All the girls are so different from each other yet, they bring into the family their own special uniqueness, pieces of the puzzle that only they can fill.
I don’t believe that life comes and doesn’t demand something from us. Work of sorts. Choosing to be self aware- is work. Choosing to love those that are hard for us to love – is work. Changing those rough spots in our character – is work. Becoming a better version of self – is work. Relationship -is work. At times; love -is work. Being present – is work.
There it is….”Being present”……. It is my chosen job for the fall. I want to spend more time in the present. Master the ability to just be…. I want to spend less time in the future – with it’s worry, and even less time in the past with it’s regrets and hurt. But, It will take work for me. This I know. Anything worth having, worth keeping, worth achieving, takes work.. would we really appreciate it, if we didn’t know what it cost us? I wonder.
Oh that it did come more natural….My quest to be present started with the death of my sister last month. I could feel myself spiraling…flipping out, already waffling on the edge of stuff. Worsened by her passing, I could sense myself jumping back and forth between the should have been’s and the what if’s, a place I had been spending much to much time in anyway…. Letting “that” play in my life like a little ornery child, unsupervised.
I felt stuck in the past. Paralyses in the present. Terrified of the future. Until jolted awake, once gain being confronted with the challenge to be more present. There are other things that haunt me as well… things that I would go back and change if only I could, regrets. OH, how I vowed no more. I found myself asking, girl where is your faith? then with my own arms wrapped around me, I close my eyes and remind myself that, “everything I need, I have in this moment.” The present self knows that this is true…..and I breath.
By my very nature I tend to insure that I have so many plates spinning that there really isn’t time to be present in the here and now… running to the past to spin those plates, dashing to the future to set up more plates… my whole present is the motion of moving to and fro… stay busy enough that the present can’t catch me…. yet it can totally trip me up when it does catch up with me. Leaving me usually battered and bruised.
I am grateful for the subtle whisper in the wind. God whispers, I call them. Sent to reminds me to slow down a little…. take stock….breath in… let go….and be brave enough to just “be”, trusting that what I did in the past; I did to the best of what I knew to do, and grabbing a hold of the knowledge that the future is already designed and God, who is a good God, will give me the tools I need to embrace it when it arrives. All I have to do, is to be in the here and now…..
Standing tall, eyes closed as the winds brush by. I can sense my body lean. Sway.. and before I know it, I let go and fall into fall.
A Cowgirl Called 