I enjoy the glorious colours, especially in the Qu'appelle Valley. The flat, harvested fields suddenly open into a sweep of orange, brown and gold with specks of red and burgundy. Takes my breath away.
From Walter's 60th birthday, to Mark's 30th birthday, to Caylea's 27th birthday - not taking any of these special celebrations for granted after cancer has affected our lives - I am feeling a little sentimental today.
With Thanksgiving this coming weekend, my heart is filled with all the goodness and grace God has lavished on our family. I just want to take time to meditate on the gifts and blessings, special memories and gatherings our family has had in light of the COVID interruption in our lives. God has been good and He is with us through everything we experience, whether joyful or draining.
As I stare out at the Tamarack tree in our backyard, I enjoy its transformation through the change of seasons. Right now it is a pretty golden/green hue, with the dark brown cones more visible as the needles have already begun to fall. When we first moved to this home, the tree was maybe nine feet tall. Now it must be forty or fifty feet tall! The first autumn we lived here, I noticed the change of colour and the needles being shed. I thought the tree was an evergreen of some kind, and that it was dying!
I shared this with our First Nations dad/mushum, Kush, and he just had a good laugh at my expense! Almost every year since then he teases me about my dead Tamarack! I felt a little helpless when I thought maybe I should have done something to prepare it for winter, or had failed to care for it properly to keep it alive.
Right now, I feel like that about our life journey. We have faced and continue to face challenging circumstances. Some are personal. Some are within our ministry. Some are my own individual areas that God is working on! But the season of fall seems to depict a time of shedding unnecessary stuff. Of preparing for a season of cold and dark and what appears to be death, or at least a long hibernation. When growth is not obvious and change seems at a standstill.
Fall is also a time of harvest, and I have to remind myself that we have seen great abundance as God has blessed our family and our ministry. Caylea has survived her cancer journey! Our kids have grown up and become wonderful, funny, kind and Jesus-loving adults. Our local church has grown and matured in the 26 years since its inception. And our tent has been enlarged to go beyond Regina to parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and across Canada through NCEM's sphere of influence!
The splendid display of autumn does give way to the winter of rest. Much of nature does die off and seems to disappear during our Canadian season of ice and snow. But the roots beneath the surface of the dirt are alive. The sap within the trees is still. The seeds are dormant until the heat and moisture of spring will resurrect them.
My sentimentality is moving towards hope as I consider what God has done and is continuing to do in and around me. I am being shaped and molded into His image, through the hard times and the very pleasant times. Jesus is my hope. His patience and grace makes me feel loved, even as I wrestle to surrender to what I don't always understand. But I know I can trust Him and rest in His purposes.
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