Shades of October

In L. M. Montgomery’s classic book “Anne of Green Gables,” eleven-year-old Anne, with arms full of tree boughs, enters her house and exclaims, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill?”

The colors of this autumn in Pennsylvania would have given Anne a thrill, and they have blessed me every time I gaze out the window. The dogwood leaves lingered red into purple until they fell, and still now the sassafras, hickory, and maple trees cling to their cloaks of yellow, orange and red. As I hung laundry yesterday morning, gusts of wind turned the air into a rainstorm of leaves, carpeting the back porch and steps and lawn with color, covering all the ground I had cleared an hour earlier.

Up here on the mountain, few things bring quite so much joy as family work projects, and raking leaves is a family affair. One person operates the leaf blower, and everyone else grabs a rake and helps sweep the leaves into large mounds. Then together we push each mound of leaves onto a tarp, pick up the four corners, and drag the leaves away, dumping them until they create a pile so big the children disappear inside it. There is something deeply satisfying about the visible progress of a raking project, and the feeling of aching arms, and the sound of crunching leaves, and the smell of autumn, sweet and crisp and earthy. My heart swelled last week to see my small son manning the leaf blower, straining to control a machine nearly as tall as he is but persevering all the same. Or to look up and see both of my grandfathers sharing the porch swing, evaluating the progress below, peering into the faces of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But if October is a month of color and work, lavish and busy, it is also a month of transition – a month of changing seasons, deliciously warm one day and bitterly frigid the next. In my spirit, I have felt the trajectory of October, the way this month breathes the last breath of summer before succumbing to colder days and nights, to frost upon the ground, to bare branches and brown grass. And I have felt the weariness of October, how all this blazing glory seems to leave the world emptied, spent.

I feel like a tree of October. At the start of this year I bravely pushed out leaves into a new world, facing adventures and misadventures. I was warmed under the African sun, shaken over rough roads, and carried by airplanes, taxis and buses into places of barrenness and beauty. My roots tangled with neighbors from all over the world, and I made room for whoever I could under my canopy. But for me, for now, that season is past, and I can feel my strength ebbing, my greens fading to yellow and brown, the edges of my courage curling up. Like an October tree, I am ready for release, ready to shrug off my burdens and settle into a winter’s hibernation. In time, I trust I will be ready for rebirth… but right now, I am ready for rest.

Yet for better and for worse, I cannot simply slip away into hibernation. No matter what the temperature outside, I have a family to feed, small tears to wipe away, songs to sing before bedtime. I have papers to sign, snacks to pack, clothes and counters and sticky fingers to wash. I have books to read, words to say, boxes to unpack, furniture to move. I have people to love and be loved by, and none of them can be muted, paused, or put on hold. My grandmother liked to say that we “labor unto rest,” but what happens in seasons when the resting place seems ever an arm’s length away?

I recognize that my weariness may have much to do with this year of intense transition. In the last twelve months, I have moved three times, inhabited three homes, and interacted with three communities of people. And each time, my family and I have carried parts of one place to the next:  memories, photographs, words, ways of being. Here my older children teach their new classmates how to count to ten in Swahili, and my small daughter announces one day that she “can’t see Mount Meru.” That 15,000 foot mountain dominating the horizon… Where did it go?

In all this transition, I am learning that if I am longing for rest, I must not wait for my circumstances to change. Regardless of where I am living, life will be as stressful as I allow it to be, and deep down, I know that rest for the weary comes not in a change of the weather, but a change of the heart. “Come to me,” Jesus tells his disciples. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light” (Matt. 11:28-30).

I may not have the luxury of a winter’s hibernation, but like a tree of October, I am invited to release all that weighs me down, to give my worries and weariness to Jesus. I am invited to lift my bare branches up to my Creator and Sustainer and to allow him to cover me with his peace, his presence, and his purpose through whatever the winter may bring.

Yes, Anne, I too am glad to live in a world of Octobers. And even more, I am glad to live in a world sustained by a love so big and beautiful that I can rest, knowing that all I have to give is more than enough in the arms of the humble, gentle One whose giving never ends.