Feeling Fallish
I know, fallish isn’t a word. When it is underlined in red
on my computer screen, a right click gives me the option of correcting it to
Fallfish or Tallish. Why you could be tallish and not have it be fallish
doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m too tired on this fall-like day to look it
up. Although Fallfish is pretty curiosity peaking, isn’t it?
Fall is the season of orange and yellow, harvest and bare
trees, the beginning of shorter days and longer nights. Outdoor work gives way
to indoor tasks, gardening gets exchanged for crocheting. Despite the vibrant
colors and the promise of holidays, I’m always sad in the fall.
The change from fall to winter, from winter to spring and
even spring to summer seems gradual to me. There is an easing from one to the
next, cool to cooler, cooler to warmer, warmer to hot. But here in Southern
California, where our hottest times of the year are often in the fall, it’s the
shift in light that seems like a curtain yanked closed on a season. It’s still
hot, it’s still sunny, and feels like summer until late afternoon when darkness
crashes down on the day. It’s an abrupt and cruel way to end a day that is just
beginning to cool and slow. No more evening walks after dinner, or sitting on
the porch watching the sunset. The sun drops like a stone while I’m in the
kitchen cooking, and it’s headlights through the window that lets me know my
husband is home.
I notice it immediately, this shortening of daylight. It has
always affected me, some years more than others and I’ve learned to let go my
impulse to overcome it by a force of will and just let it wash over me until
it’s past. I immerse myself in Bible study and football until I find an uneasy
rhythm in the early darkness. Once winter hits and football ends, the most
important date on the calendar is the one that marks the return of daylight
savings time.
I’ve heard all the advice and tried all the techniques,
short of buying a ridiculously expensive light that mimics sunlight or moving
to Arizona. It is what it is, and it is, as we are so fond of saying, just a
season.
Without fall, there would be no promise of spring. When I
lived in Ohio, the encouragement was that about the time you were getting sick
of a season, it was starting to change. When you think you can’t take anymore
cold, dreary wet days, the snow begins to fall. When you are sick of shoveling
snow and having beanie hair, the lake begins to thaw and the daffodils
We love the promises of God, especially the ones that make
us feel hopeful of change. It’s in the waiting for the promise that can be
hard, that can be faith challenging and wearisome. While the circumstances
change, God’s word never does. No matter the season, it is unfailing.
What are you waiting for?
While you wait, wait expectantly,
the promise of spring is coming.
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