autumn waits patiently

Are you one of those people who asks, for lack of better ice breakers, "What's your favorite season?" I don't like that question. As usual my answer is more complicated than the questioner is generally wanting to hear. I always want to say something like this:

"If it is winter, I like Winter because it drives me inside where there are fireplaces, friends, books to be read that lay in wait over the Summer, and steamy coffee shops. There is also snowshoeing, cabins in the snow if you can get there or afford it, and there is ice skating if you live somewhere that cold. I also like putting on tire chains. I know, I'm such a lesbian.


However, if it is spring, I like Spring because Spring drives me back outside--right about the hour I'm completely fed up with Winter and the claustrophobia that sets in after months of very little sun. I like planting things in spring in hopes of future beauty and bounty.


But if it is summer, then I like Summer best because that means one thing...backpacking & hiking. Those short blissful months, here in the Northwest, of warmth that heats the rocks of the Cascade Mountains so that we can go play above the treeline. Honorable mentions are fresh produce, driving with your windows down, shorts, short skirts, and, of course, blue Slurpee's.


Then there's Autumn which is my favorite season of all when it is Fall. I like Fall because of color, harvest, my birthday, fog, school, mtn. blueberries, and a new season of CSI Las Vegas, Survivor, and Amazing Race.


For years I've tried to wrap my mind around the spiritual and life lessons so prolific in this season. Autumn is the very picture of death and dying...AND YET it is gloriously beautiful!! It is, strangely, beautiful BECAUSE of the dying. Generally we (especially Americans) don't think of death and dying as beautiful. I think it is obvious, God seems to be clearly illustrating something quite applicable for us to ponder in our own lives. Of course all this death we witness around us during the Fall is just temporary. Everything doesn't die. It isn't so much death as hibernation, sleepy time, preservation, survival. Earth's environment is organized so that land above the Tropic of Cancer and below the Tropic of Capricorn will experience some changes in seasons. The organization of nature, as God ordered it (for we cannot un-tilt the Earth or change its revolution around the sun), implies that things have to die in order to live. Hmmm, I think I've heard that one before."


So that's the long answer to the question, "What's your favorite season, winter, spring, summer, or fall?" Essentially, "YES!"


I've observed here in the Northwest that Fall is more glorious some years than others. Some years it just falls and that's it! No spectacular show. However, this year happens to be particularly amazing! Looking at the colors that seem more vibrant than in recent years, I can't help but think again that God has a life lesson built right into the blueprint of nature. I don't know about you but I can forget that life not only ebbs but flows, progresses and falls back, flourishes and wanes, falls flat and rises to the top.


My life is glorious sometimes, like this Fall, but I also experience seasons that are downright anticlimactic. Other seasons seem to be the end of me. Do you ever look at a season of beauty and wonder "Why can't it always be this way?" Well, there you go again...God seems to have given an illustration in the very air we breath. How can we grow if we don't first die? How can we truly flourish unless we first go through the harshness of winter? How can we make it through our winters if it were not for the memory of seasons in the past that did eventually end? Perhaps God gave us season so that we might learn to love whatever the present season has for us.


I'm grateful to be established in the Pacific Northwest. I love having discernible seasons that change one into the other. The progress of seasons gives me hope. I can see that they change. Seasons always change. They don't stay the same all the time. I like that. As someone who is manic depressive, I like that. It is good to know that depression and mania are like seasons. They come for a while but they leave too. I feel like it is God's promise to me when I experience the changing of Earth's seasons. He promises that hard times always change into something else, usually something good.


"Kimberly, I do not change but you will find that your life is filled with change like the seasons of the Earth. But don't be shaken. Every season of your life has a purpose to either prepare you for the future or give you rest from the past seasons. And, it's okay, you can like ALL the seasons...don't ever let anyone make you choose."