day two: fall

Our year, segmented into four distinct seasons, is full of change. None is more welcome than Fall. How fitting that today is its first day and big changes lay ahead. Changing seasons, changing colors, changing schedules, changing people. After months long and drawn out by the intensity of heat, the humidity draining us of all moisture, all energy, we anxiously await this time of great transition. We move our summer clothes and vacations to the back of our memory, only to pull out scarves and boots and coats, hot tea and sweatpants. We shed our summer skin and the freedom that brought it for what seems to be rigid scheduling, late nights reading textbooks, drinking tea and hoping for a chill in the air, breath visible, that is ushered in by the holidays. We set aside bikinis for Halloween costumes, popsicles for pumpkin pie, brown grass for rolling green hills. We think in the tones of nature--hues of red and orange, the palette of a wonderful Creator.

For my life thus far, Fall has been bound inextricably with the start of a new school year--new classes, notebooks, pens and pencils, routines...new opportunities awaiting, new relationships to be formed. The heart of Fall, it seems, beats with such physical beauty and such profound newness. The sun-scorched land begs for rain to quench its thirst for new life; we, too, beg for the newness that a new season ushers in.

Fall looks different in San Diego, as do most things in my life. Today, I woke to gloomy skies, a cool breeze blowing through my window. I dressed in a skirt over leggings, a sweater over a tank top, my French headband over my messy, air-dried hair. I looked forward to a raspberry steamer from Aromas. Today, this change in seasons could not make up its mind. I found myself, iced drink in hand, shivering one moment, sweating and frantically tearing out of my sweater the next.

Isn't change like that--pushing and pulling, unsure of where it should lead?
Isn't change like that--leaving us with both hopeful expectation and fragile hesitation?
Like fall with the weather, so it is with change and the heart.

Yes, that is the very nature of change. Altogether exciting and frustrating, necessary and uncomfortable. Some days, I move faster than the weather patterns--I dress prematurely cold on a hot day. My closet isn't quite ready for the change that the Fall requires.

Closet, no; heart, yes. My heart is ready for all that Fall will bring--the beauty of golden leaves dropping from cracked branches to the ground, the scent of the first rainfall, the challenge of a new humanity in a new semester, a process of visible growth as the world spins on. The seasons continue their cycle, and I, like the trees, am changed.