So I managed to dig out the big blue rubbermaid box containing my autumn decorations this morning - this after several weeks of Lucy asking for it to emerge and be opened, its red, orange, and brown contents arranged, candles lit, pumpkin bread baking underway. She keeps me going in a lot of ways, I have to say. This is my third fall in Florida, and it hasn't gotten any easier for me to get in the mood by awareness of what the calendar says. Michigan born and bred, spending all my years (except the first one of our marriage - a trial by fire in Arizona that is for another post altogether) after moving from the Great Lakes in places where there were at least traces of my favorite season, if not full blown replicas replete with leaf raking (and subsequent pile jumping into), warm cinnamon donuts and hot cider fresh from mills we visited, picking our pumpkins from the pile at the patch, hay bale mazes, brown leaves crunching under our feet and emitting the smoky smell unique to the time of year, ironing red and yellow ones between sheets of wax paper...
What can I say? I'm a northern girl, and no help for it. Not suprisingly, last Wednesday evening at church the message was about Contentment. Accepting where God has you. The dangers of losing one's right perspective to a love of money, things; and of finding false security in these. It is a struggle for me - a glass half empty person, an idealist, not wanting to be dishonest about what I would prefer, which sounds all good, but somehow does not work in my walk with Jesus. If I've learned anything about this Christian life, it's that God wants our Trust. Especially when it doesn't seem by all counts that we should be handing it over to Him Whom We Cannot See. What if we never move to a place where the air is sharp and clean again? What if I've seen my last oak or maple leaf turn? It's possible..and what am I supposed to do with that? What I can do, I'm sure..open the blue box, let Lucy help me transform the living room, mix the bread dough; find the thousand and one things that I do have to be thankful for and acknowledge God in the giving of them. Most importantly, I can remember to live in the now - where I am, who I'm with, what is before me to do, or use, or enjoy. He knows the deepest desires of my heart, and I choose to entrust them to Him, who does all things well.