A Self-Inflicted Autumn

Five Minute Friday – The Gypsy Mama invites us to just write, for five minutes, without regard to perfection, and share with one another.  Today’s topic:  Grateful.

Today, it seems, I am channeling fall.

Hot apple cider, fuzzy socks, and pumpkin bread.  If I could get away with it, I’d have worn my scarf and wool skirt.

My husband wonders if I’ve lost my mind, considering it’s the middle of July in the hottest part of the country, ninety-something today, and children all red-faced clomping in and out, swimming goggles plastered to foreheads and sweat matted hairdos, as they carry on their very standard summer business.  Swim.  Laugh.  Sweat.  Hydrate.  Eat.  Work.  Play.  Repeat.

In spring, I felt consumed by an internal winter.  Now here, in this sweltering, sticky heat, this reminiscent girl melts into a self-inflicted autumn.  My hair yellows and skin dries parched, and here I am, a brittle maple leaf drifting downward on an icy breeze, dreaming of yew wood chimney fires and fingerless gloves wrapped around coffee mugs.

Lithia Park, Ashland, Oregon

Growing up in southern California, I never lived a weathered autumn until I moved north as an adult.  Now, it seems, my biological clock aims to make up for lost time, playing tricks with an internal seasonal shift all-wrong for the actual outdoor conditions – a symptom of the chronic homesickness that plagues me.  And I am growing pale and thin with wistfulness, withering under the weight of what ails me.

Oh, wouldn’t it be easier if my affliction was biological?  Perhaps a virus, a bug of some sort, a bone broken instead of a splintered heart.  But there is no pill for nostalgia.  No elixir that will alleviate homesickness.  And I cannot bottle up and swallow down a way through this hurting place.  There is no capsule that will bring me home, not even a dose of cold autumn rain.

Ashland, Oregon

But there is a cure.

I have a Healer and He has given me a prescription.  

It is expensive, and it is free.  

I drink it down and I open my eyes and I take it all in, every bit, and I utter quiet thankyou's and silent wonder for all the gifts around me that my sickness keeps me from seeing.  The cure is the noticing.  It is the breathing in of beauty, in all its forms.  It is loving these hard places, as much as the golden ones.  It is inhaling and exhaling with the knowledge that every single breath is gift.  

The only cure is gratitude.

Scribbled upon this thick and tear-stained prescription pad that is the very Word, He scrawls all over these pages with love’s mighty pen, the tonic to cover my heart with the balm of gratefulness, soothing to all wounds, the very medicine for David and Abraham and all the saints and sinners since:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. (Psalm 118:29)

*All photos but the last are courtesy of Phase4Photography, who does not endorse the opinions or ideas expressed here.*