October: Seasons Part II
Hosea 6:3
This month’s prompt took me in a couple of different directions. For October, our word prompt is SEASONS and the scripture is Hosea 6:3. You can visit part 1 here.
One of the questions for October is “Does the weather trigger any good memories for you?
There was a time when I hated fall. It’s hard to believe but it is true. October of 2007 was perfect until it wasn’t. We spent the first couple of weeks enjoying the season around our house in Onalaska. The colors outside were brilliant and there was a crispness in the air. We tried new restaurants and sat watching Hallmark movies. On Sunday, October 28 we had one of the most awesome conversations. The advice I was given would prove to be invaluable in the years to come. Later that day she taught me how to make her and Aunt Robins potato soup.
That Monday morning October 29 almost broke me. For months after I had a hard time going into the kitchen. The place our last conversation took place. The place she took her last breath. At 26 while kneeling on the kitchen floor I said goodbye to my mother.
Hosa 6:3 tells us that we need to press on and acknowledge the Lord. For a moment in time, I struggled to press on. My world imploded that day. There was so much that I had to put behind me to keep pressing on.
But a video clip of my mother encouraged me. She quoted Ecclesiastes 8:15 “And so I heartily recommended that you pursue joy, for the best a person can do under the sun is to enjoy life. Eat, drink, and be happy. If this is your attitude, joy will carry you through the toil every day that God gives you under the sun.”
I had to make an asserted effort to press on to find JOY but slowly, through the Lord’s strength, I began to find it. Joy is not a mood and an attitude it is a posture for which you carry yourself. The more I pressed on and acknowledged the more I came to carry myself with a posture of JOY.
It was in that posture that I decided I wanted to change my attitude towards October. It was not easy but the Lord gave me a reason to look at October differently. What an amazing gift it was to. On October 28, 2011, we welcomed Hailey Renee into our family.
There was a time when October was a dark place for me. But now….Now it is one of my favorite times of year. I pressed and on and came out of the darkness into the light.
Stephen Colbert once said “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There is no escaping that.” There is peace when you have an attitude of holistic acceptance & gratitude. I can’t pick what I am grateful for. Colbert goes on to say “I don’t want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life… Then you have to be grateful for all of it.”
So now “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
Questions for October:
Does the weather trigger any good memories for you?
Does your family have any fall traditions?
What is it about fall that speaks to you?
How would you describe your current season of life?
Now I challenge you to grab your favorite pen, (Mine right now are the Paper Mate Ink Joy gels) a journal, or notebook, and let’s start journaling.
Simply,
Jess
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As Autumn goes past it peak here in the mountains of North Carolina we head now into the darker colder months of the year. The colors were great but now most of the leaves have fallen. Today we wake up to 28 degrees. Cooooooool. Brrrrr. But the seasons are a good remind of time passing by – more quickly than I would like. Genesis 8:22 states it this way: From The Living Bible: “As long as the earth remains, there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.”