Boom...and it is fall.

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I don't think I have ever experienced a year when Labor Day weekend was like flipping a switch quite so much as this year.  It was uncanny!

I was driving down the street on Tuesday taking in all the sights (the flowers, weeds, tips of colored leaves, children with back packs heading dow the sidewalk) and sounds (cicadas), and smells in the air that are just uniquely fall. The slanting of the sunlight is different; the breeze feels different. Boom! From summer to fall, just like that!

It got me thinking about seasons of change, and how in our lives those of us in midlife are in the fall season as well. It too sneaks up on us, catching us unaware. But there it is, with all the adaptations we need to make. There are things we need to leave behind, things we need to pull out of the closets and decide if they are still useful, still fit our personalities and needs, still need to be refreshed, or passed on, or just plain dumped.  What will we hang on to, and what can we let go of?  

It has been interesting this week to also have those days that feel like flashbacks to summer, with 90 degree days...but it is still defintely fall. (I know, not technically.)  Transitions!  Changes! Celebrations for what has been and is now...preparations for what is to come.  What are the important things that are happening inside us, around us?

In this midlife season we look at our calendars and realize we have options about how we will fill these days, and weeks, and months, and years. Will we wake up each morning and ask God what should be on the agenda, or will we let other people or circumstances dictate what takes priority? Will our time be lived out wisely? Will we live intentionally, or by accident? With peace, or anxiety?

Fall is my favorite time of year, though I'm not certain why.  It might be that sense of new beginning that comes with a new school and church year.  It might be a return to a rhythm.  I might be the sense of maturity and productivity, fields and trees ripening, apple cider and pumpkins, or simply the beauty, the colors and light. 

"It is good," as the Creator might say. 

Will I relish this fall season of life as well, paying attention to the colors, the winds of the Spirit, the relationships that evolve, the opportunities to ripen into mature godly people? Will I carry the presence of God and the Spirit of peace and joy into the rooms I enter? Will I be there to lift up, care for and listen to those in their winter, as well as being there to bless and feed and nurture those in the spring and summer of life?

Rather than deny our age and idolize youth we have the chance to model a healthy midlife that embraces all of the blessings that come with years of life, experience, growth, relationships, and relationship with the God who created us...for just a time as this.

IT IS GOOD!