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Focal verse
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Reflection
Many afternoons lately, after school, I’ve found myself at home alone. Gone are the days when the kids are at my side all day or when we’re walking around town together. We’re not going to the park to slide and swing.
Instead my kids are gaining their independence.
After grabbing a snack, my son usually walks to his best buddy’s home, or the two of them will meet each other halfway. The boys go outside or bounce back and forth between our houses. My daughter likes to walk home from school and then quickly change for volleyball practice.
I love seeing my kids stretch their wings, find their people and learn new skills—even as I wander around the house, wondering what to do. Everything in motherhood is a season, and right now, as I’m finding a bit more breathing room for myself, this season is sweet. We’ll come together for dinner and reading before bed. I’ll hear snippets of their day and give thanks for the teachers and friends who are shaping and loving them too.
Seasons come and go. We know this. But the ache is no less present.
Watching our kids grow is such a gift, but it comes with grief at remembering who they were at each stage along the way and knowing we can never go back. While sitting with another parent recently, they told me how they’d love to go back for just one day and snuggle their child as a baby. I feel that too. But I also feel the joy of listening to my kids’ stories and hearing the big questions they have. Of knowing that they’re learning how to be a friend. Of seeing them come alive with their interests. It’s both/and.
Every fall, I remember to celebrate the beauty in change.
When the days or the seasons don’t go as planned, I lean on these reflections to remember God’s presence in my days—a theology of fall, if you will.
A theology of fall sees this season in both the beauty and the change. It’s finding hope where you’d least expect. It’s trusting that God’s goodness is all around us in creation. It’s knowing that the seasons, just like our lives, may not go as planned but that God never leaves our side.
A theology of fall says that right now, whatever is going on in your life, God knows the pain and the beauty and walks with you.
Practices
- Go on a color walk around your neighborhood. Pick a color, perhaps including the array of colors in the leaves, and see what you can spot. Give thanks for the brilliance of God’s creation.
- Reach out to your pastor or church leaders to find people who are going through a new season (grief, new diagnosis, job transition) and write them a note acknowledging that you’re thinking of them.
Prayer practice
This month, pray one of the offertory prayers from Evangelical Lutheran Worship as a family. Commit to praying it together every day. What is God saying to you through these words?
Blessed are you, O God, maker of all things. Through your goodness you have blessed us with these gifts: our selves, our time, and our possessions. Use us, and what we have gathered, in feeding the world with your love, through the one who gave himself for us, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen (ELW, page 107).
