Suddenly, seemingly overnight, there are yellow leaves littering the lawn. Slowly falling like leathery, wafting boats, I can feel a sort of similar change in my soul identifying with the leaves that are shriveling up and falling to be cradled by the grass. I think the changing of summer into fall is my favorite seasonal transition. It’s one that is slow and sudden at the same time, but once it’s happening, you can tell–because things start dying away. Fall is an interesting season because plants, flowers, and the beauty of summer is actually slowing dying off, but it is masked by the orange leaves on the ground, pumpkin spice lattes, and the opportunity to break out our scarves. It’s interesting to me to watch as this season transitions and realize that a bunch of leaves dying and it getting colder also brings new opportunity–for longer walks, stronger lattes, boots that crunch underfoot, and things that summer just couldn’t offer.
My life feels a lot like summer moving into fall. There are parts that are dying away that I’d rather comfortably cling to, but it also feels strangely refreshing to open my eyes and hope to see something new ahead. There are pieces of daily routine that I am used to that are still holding me up like a foundation, but also a lot of new pieces that I keep holding in my hands wondering what I’m supposed to do with. Sometimes a season of change is something you can see coming at you on the horizon, and sometimes it falls on you like waking up to an unexpected snow. This time, for me, it’s the latter. There are some days where I feel like I spend a little too much time sitting in a daze wondering to God if I’m remotely on the right track, and then there are days where I’m determined to keep living as if God wasn’t asking me to turn the page to start a new chapter.
But maybe he asks me to trust him in starting a new chapter simply because I was getting too comfortable in the one I was in.
I’m not opposed to change, but I like to be the one directing it. I like to have a transitional plan from Point Here to Point There. God seems to have a different style, however. He tends to move me before I’m ready to places I feel I am not yet capable of managing. When I ask him about it, it always seems to be his perfect recipe for “now there is no choice but to depend on me.”
And it’s a good thing for me, like medicine I don’t want to take but know I need. It makes me feel somewhat watched over and cared for like a parent might, but it also tastes somewhat bitter from my human reaction of fear and desire for safety.
Recently, Dino Rizzo spoke at our church about turning a new page and letting go of any items of our past that might be holding us back from God’s will. While I liked the sermon, I wasn’t listening to it thinking it was for me. I thought it was powerful, enjoyable, memorable, but not a topic that pertained to my personal, current circumstances–somebody else’s, but not mine. However, near the end of the sermon, I felt a shift in my spirit. Like a poke in the ribs from the Holy Ghost, I listened more intently, slowing gaining a confused understanding that the Lord was telling me I was wrong, and that I was one of the ones that Rizzo’s message was for.
As I’ve explored this “poke in my ribs,” I’ve come to realize that perhaps there are times when God will ask me to turn the page of my life even when I am fairly happy with the chapter I am in. I am learning that my life, contrary to my usual understanding, is not some book that I am writing (cue Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”) based on my dreams and talents and others’ expectations. Rather, it is a story that God is shaping, like a custom message covered in my flesh. My life is meant to recite his glory in ways I cannot understand or come up with on my own. I know that his story is probably I lot better than the one I try to keep writing.
When he asks me to let things die, maybe it’s not as necessary as it feels to have a funeral over what he removed from my storyline. Like a once-fresh and green leaf turning dry and cracked and brown, the hopes and dreams he asks me to let go of sometimes allow my life to be more breathable and beautiful for the season I’m walking into. In summer, the green leaves are perfect for hot weather to provide shade. In the fall, they create a colorful palette to enjoy as the weather cools. Change. It’s all a part of the design. It’s not a rug being pulled out from under me like a trick. It’s a part of the season, and it’s not bad, it’s not devastating, and it shouldn’t diminish my purpose or hope for life. It just sometimes feels awkward and naked, like a branch with no more covering (have I worn out my leaf analogies yet?).
I think about Isaiah 43, when it talks about God encouraging his people in Babylon that he would bring the change the were hoping for: being released from their captivity.
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 “Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild beasts will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.
God speaks of things like “making a way in the sea” and “making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” He consoles his people, saying that he will give a drink (relief) to his “chosen people;” the people who he specifically chose and made to declare his goodness (v. 21). Reading this over and over, I start wondering if it’s possible to be in a season of wilderness and not know it. Maybe we just get used to the stress and demands and warfare and it becomes our normal. But here, God seems to promise that even in the desert, he makes a river. When he’s ready to do a new thing, he’s asking, “do you not perceive it?” Which I read as, “hello!? Why are you dragging your feet? I’ve got better things for you than this place you’re trying to stay in!”
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth.”
New chapters, new pages, new changes, new seasons–it’s all a little bittersweet in any transition. I think (hope) that’s normal, because that’s what I feel… A little less brave than what I probably should. But if fear is the bitter taste in my mouth, then the sweetness comes from the promise that the Lord is leading me out of an wilderness I was blind to, into a river that runs through a desert, where on the other side is a season that is beautifully different than my last.
And when I get comfortable, I’m sure he’ll make another river for us transition across again.
