Autumn Disappointment

 I'm on a walk with Miriam, and the sky is a gloomy gray. For the last couple of weeks, Timehop has been teasing me with pictures of past autumn glory. Orange and red, gold, scarlet, rust, yellow, vermilion--our neighborhood a beautiful blaze of color. Today I mostly see dull, faded green and the occasional brownish-orange, nothing brilliant or spectacular.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I have the impulse to try and write about it. And then instead of adding it to my to-do list as one more "should" that I'll never get around to, I pull out my phone and start dictating as I walk through the neighborhood, pushing a stroller with my daughter.

It's 70 degrees today, and I'm sweating. The deliciously cool fall weather that finally seemed to have arrived for good has disappeared again. I hear someone mowing his lawn. Are the leaves actually going to change, or are they just going to let go in disappointment? I can't believe how green the trees still are on November 2. The wind kicks up, and dozens of leaves float to the ground without having revealed their beauty. Why?

Too much warmth? Too much sunshine? Too much chlorophyll? I have no idea of the scientific answer, but I can't help feeling let down. The promise of autumn's beauty--the glory in the dying that I have waxed poetic about so many times--isn't showing up this year. What does that mean?

It's this strange reminder in this strange new season of my life that nothing is promised. Or is that even true? Lots of bigger, eternal things are promised. I can trust the God who is sovereign over the seasons. Even when the transition is unremarkable and disappointing. Even when the beauty I anticipated and longed for falls short of my expectations.

We keep walking, and suddenly I see a beautiful red tree--the kind that usually populates our entire neighborhood. It stands out all the more because of its solitary beauty; there are no other colorful trees around to distract from its brilliant red leaves. The clouds shift a bit, and above the red tree I get a glimpse of that crisp blue autumn sky I always love to see.

A question surfaces: What will I choose to remember? The dull green-brown trees under the gray clouds...or this flash of crimson and bright blue?

It's a dilemma I face every day--a lesson the Lord has tried to teach me countless times. It's a question as old as Eve. Will you emphasize what you have, give thanks for what has been given, celebrate with gratitude? Or will you complain, meditate on what is lacking, focus on what is not yours--what has  seemingly been withheld?

The choice is always mine to make--even about something as simple as autumn leaves and brilliant colors, on a walk around my neighborhood on an ordinary Thursday morning. I'm hot and uncomfortable in my short sleeve shirt, but the breeze is blowing through my baby girl's hair. These sidewalks are uneven, hard to navigate with a stroller, but rundown houses are being renovated and given new life. The sun briefly peeks out in between all the clouds. I can walk again, after so many months of being immobile and in pain. And instead of the "all or nothing" thinking that plagues me, I'm choosing "all or something": I'm dictating this blog post instead of letting the idea disappear into the draft folder of good intentions. 

But how is all this different from Pollyanna, from naivete and rose-colored glasses? Reality is also that my girl is starting to whine, and chances are good she might be full-on screaming by the time we return home, my blood pressure rising. The lack of color is still a disappointment. I'm still going to need a shower. My jeans are still too tight.

It's a matter of who gets the last word. Sunshine briefly warms my face. Tiny dimpled hands grasp the side of the stroller. No matter how unspectacular their dying, these trees will still be reborn in the spring.

The darkness will always be there. The disappointment is a permanent fixture east of Eden. But the light is more permanent still--the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.


Related:
Beautiful Through Dying
Autumn Beauty
Contemplating Beauty
Part of the Whole
The Last Word: BUT God

Roots and Sky: An Invitation to Marvel and Feast [Review + **Giveaway!**]

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Christie Purifoy has become one of my favorite modern writers. I first “met” her when we were both writing for Pick Your Portion, and I loved her contributions so much that I started following her around the internet. Almost every time she posts something she’s written, I don’t merely read, but feel compelled to comment—and it’s usually some variation on “Wow, Christie. So, so beautiful.” Her voice is lovely, piercing, elegant. So when she announced that she’d signed a book contract, I was eager to volunteer for an early review copy!

Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons is the story of Christie’s first year in her dream-come-true farmhouse, Maplehurst. She explores the way pain and joy commingle in the everyday and what it really means for dreams to come true. In the opening essay, she introduces the journey this way:

"A few weeks after moving in, one of my boys slid belt-buckle down and carved a deep scratch the entire length of that beautiful banister. Somehow I most clearly grasp the living reality of my dream come true when I touch that scratch or remember the miserable heat of that first day. We live in a good world shackled by decay. A world that always seems to fall at least a little bit short of its own promise. Yet glory dwells here too. Heaven and earth meet in scratches and scars. In broken banisters and in a Body broken for us."

[TL;DR review here--but keep reading below for the giveaway!]

Christie is a prose-poet, and her writing is exquisite. It's lyrical in a way that is very accessible—not the sort of flowery, trying-too-hard language that many readers find off-putting, but clear, vivid language with striking metaphors. It has richness and depth. Christie’s wonder and her hunger are contagious. She invites the reader to marvel with her, feast with her:

“I cannot tell whether or not these ordinary days are significant in the story of myself, in the story of my daughter, in the story of Maplehurst. Perhaps they are not. But can it be this lack of significance that makes them such a gift? They are gloriously excessive. Like a whole bowl of mismatched beads just asking me to thrust in my hand and wave my fingers. Like a sky spilling over with stars. Every moment I fail to record in Elsa’s baby book is like an unseen galaxy or an unnamed planet. Created but unobserved. Made but unremarked. What are they for? Why does God make them anyway? For the joy of it?

“He gives the blue-sky day in a month of blue skies. He gives the hand-holding day in a decade of holding our child’s hand. He gives the sunrise and sunset, always and again. He gives me a husband in the kitchen making breakfast. Not because it is Mother’s Day or because we have a new baby, but because it is morning. Again, it is morning. Again, we hunger. Again, we are satisfied.”

Yet this isn’t just another “find the beauty in the ordinary” book. Its light is crisscrossed with shadows. Christie isn’t Pollyanna; she writes not only of extravagant beauty, but also of anxiety and loneliness, depression and failure and loss. In the “Winter” section, she reflects on shielding her young children from the lines in Matthew 2 about Rachel weeping for the children of Bethlehem:

“One day they will know just how good and just how terrible the story is. They will know what Rachel’s voice sounds like, and they won’t be able to rid their minds of its awful cadence. I cannot spare them forever. Always there are more heartbroken mothers. Always there are more tears. But they will also know Emmanuel. They will know the good news of incarnation. That God walks with them, always already in the darkest places. He is especially present in the very places we imagine he cannot be. He is there holding Rachel, whispering his promises. It will not always be like this.” 

Christie doesn’t merely cling to sweetness; she fights for hope.

“This is not my first spring, and here is something I know: the day when daffodils emerge is not the day for hope. The day when seedlings show the bright green of new life is not the day for faith. That day came and went. Hope is for the dark days. The days when all you can see is mud and mess, like so many forgotten toys strewn across the backyard. Those are the days when miracles begin.”

The thing that has moved me to tears more than once in the midst of this book launch is the timing of it all and how prophetic her words have proven to be. Just weeks before the official release date, her family was devastated by tragedy, as her sister’s husband was one of the Marines lost in the January helicopter crash off Oahu.  Christie’s testimony to God’s faithful presence in the midst of unfathomable grief is startling—as she puts words to this sorrow, reading her most recent blog posts has felt to me like standing on holy ground. 

Even in heartbreaking grief, she bears witness to redemption—the priestly role she wrote about in the latter part of her book:

“The shifting seasons usher in so much redemption, even the redemption of one overgrown lilac. As priests we are witnesses to these redemptions. We are here to receive, to name the work of God’s hands, as Adam once named, and to proclaim, ‘Heaven and earth are full of thy glory!’” 

The beauty she captures is messy, not tidy; it is a beauty that makes you tremble. She describes this in the book’s final season, “Summer”:

"True beauty is not vague or distant. It is not a rose-tinted vision. Beauty belongs to the waking world. If beauty comes from God, then we will not find it in abstraction. It does not live in dreams; it lives in dirt."

I felt the need to read through Roots and Sky quickly in order to post an early review (only to procrastinate from writing one for more than two weeks…OY), but I hated to rush—it is a book to be savored, one from which I have copied many quotes and to which I expect I’ll return again.

And, great news: Revell graciously sent me an extra copy to give away! It is my delight to share this beautiful book with one of you. Comment on this post to enter, and earn extra entries through the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The winner will be announced on Saturday, February 27. 


Rita: Your visit to and "liking" of Christie's Facebook page was the lucky winning entry as randomly determined by Rafflecopter! I'll be contacting you to get the book in your hands ASAP :)

For those who didn't win, you can buy a copy of Roots and Sky through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. At only $8, you can easily justify treating yourself to a brand-new paperback (or pick up the Kindle version for even less)! 

One final note: Amazingly, Christie’s creative gift is not limited to words. She also has a way with a camera, and she captures the colors and light of Maplehurst in photos almost as gloriously as in sentences. You’ll definitely want to follow her on Instagram.

Learning to Enjoy the Beauty

My default mode is to look for error. I have been a perfectionist my whole life, and so my sharp eyes examine carefully to spot flaws. I easily see what’s wrong, what’s ugly, what doesn’t work. This mistake-radar serves me well as an editor and writer; it’s less helpful as a mom, a wife, a friend.

Over the years, I’ve been reminded again and again of the need to take a second look. I must learn to see — my own life, others around me, the world at large — through a lens focused on grace. If I am skilled at finding fault, I want to become even more adept at finding beauty. This world is full of ugliness, to be sure, but it is also full of people made in God’s image, full of His handiwork, full of His gifts.

My newest article at Ungrind is about how and why I'm learning to see and celebrate the beauty in people--check it out!

Autumn Beauty

The sky today is my favorite color of blue, the crisp shade that only comes with the quality of autumn light. Our neighborhood is finally in peak color—burning bushes ablaze, ginkgos fluffy and yellow, the maple by the park lit with an otherworldly orange.

I didn’t learn until I was an adult that the trees were these colors all along. The chlorophyll hides what is always there—but when the tree finally surrenders to the dying, the beauty emerges. I guess I always imagined that the fiery fall colors were something a tree put on, sort of the botanical equivalent of a fancy red dress. But no, the green was only hiding the tree’s realest hues.

 

In a culture that places great emphasis on "being true to yourself," on discovering your identity and living authentically, on pursuing what makes you come alive, I find it fascinating that the trees tell a different story.

I don't pay much attention to the trees in our neighborhood all summer long. I am thankful to live in an old neighborhood, where the trees cast generous shade, but their greens all bleed together unremarkably. It isn't until autumn that I realize they are so very different--that this one is a sweet gum, that's a sassafras, over there is a ginkgo. Each tree's truest, most beautiful self is only revealed when it surrenders, when it dies.

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

But for the trees, and for us, death is not the end--because for our Jesus, death did not have the last word.

Every autumn I remember again why this is my favorite season, and I see again how God has written His truth large and lovely on oaks and maples and tulip poplars: beauty comes through dying.

Previously in the fall (including more photos of our gorgeous neighborhood):
Contemplating Beauty
Death and Beauty
Part of the Whole
Compelled to Capture Beauty