September

September is upon us. In Starkville, we are having cooler weather already–a little unusual for Mississippi. That transition is always nice after the heat and humidity of Summer. Those first few mornings when the breeze is actually cooler usually lift my spirits right away. I know I’ve shared that Autumn is my favorite time of year.

As I was deciding on a theme for this month’s desktop wallpaper calendar (click to download if you like), it occurred to me that often there is no other time when we more readily embrace transition than September. In fact, at this time of year we are sometimes even eager for the changes that come. As I mentioned, September brings the end of Summer’s heat and the first hints of more pleasant temperatures. It celebrates the beginning of a new school year for so many youngsters. It sets in motion the warming up of nature’s color palette as we begin to see subtle shifts in the blue of the sky and the fading of green on tree leaves. These transitions shake us out of the tired landscape where we’ve spent the summer.

In September, Summer’s luxuries of play and rest and taking breaks give way to renewed motivation to get back to the tasks at hand. We re-adjust our schedules with more focus. We outfit ourselves with new “necessities” that will spur us on to accomplish new things. We shake off the doldrums and attempt to get ourselves moving again.

I’ve written about the many changes that have been happening in my life over the last few months. Transition should be old hat to me by now. Yet, I find that the doldrums of complacency in my heart still need a little shaking free this month. So often, the heart moves at a different pace than the rest of us in making a transition. Sometimes it leads the charge. Sometimes it lags behind and needs a little coersion. Sometimes it just grows wayward in avoidance or denial. But, the realities of change and transition are just that. Realities. Just as surely as seasons come and go; the cycle of life changes can not be denied.

In thinking about the resistence I sometimes feel in my own heart when faced with transition, I was struck by one little line in the Wordsworth poem I included in my wallpaper design.

“Unfaded, yet prepared to fade”

That observation of September is so appropriate. Summer’s verdant colors still largely remain this month. The cooler temperatures reminiscent of Fall will be sporadic at best. Summer remains unfaded. Yet. [That's a big word for only three letters.] YET, in September, Summer is “prepared” to fade. For in September, just as in any situation ripe for transition, you never know which season you’ll get moment by moment. At a breath’s notice, Summer and Autumn are just as likely to appear. Perhaps it’s nature’s way of coaxing us into the change.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that this particular season in my life is one of transition. I want my heart to be prepared. I want my heart to be ready to embrace it, to accept it, to shine through it. As chapters fade and new ones open, I want my heart on board. Completely.

Life Goes.

I always think of pink this month since a precious little girl entered my world on the 30th. That was two years ago now, and she’s made an indelible impression. This August brings many changes to my life just like that one did. Baby Girl and Bug are both moving to new preschool classrooms where they will be challenged in new ways. Little Drummer Boy is beginning “big school” where he and I both will experience his newfound independence. I’ve just completed the first month of my new business and the beginnings of adjusting to working from home. Looking back at the post I recently wrote for my friend, Annie’s modern homemaking series at SisterWisdom.com, I was reminded again today that life is nothing if not an exercise in transition. The ability to embrace change is a gift worth cultivating. As I contemplate the upcoming changes in my life and the lives of my children, I realize they are only another example of the ebb and flow of lives lived. I think my challenge as a mother, a designer, a provider, a friend, a human is to make sure those lives are really lived, that changes bring a more richer existence, and that this continued persistence of living is a slow but unmistakable upward climb.

I can’t believe I’m offering this eyecandy on the actual first day of the month. Don’t hold me to that in future posts, but I hope you enjoy the August 2010 desktop wallpaper. Nothing says change (and growth) to me like the budding of blooms. I’m looking for those metaphorical blooms in each of the places of change I’m experiencing these days. I think I can concur with Mr. Frost regarding the lessons of life.

“It goes on.”

These Truths

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

~ Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

This desktop wallpaper calendar is a revision of  last year’s July version [point-click to download a full size version]. I’ll post more soon about the news headlines that have taken priority over creating a new design this year. However, the sentiment holds true. The truths of 1776 are just as self-evident today. People in liberty can do amazing things. The meager efforts of humankind can flourish in freedom–both personal and national. Happy Independence Day!

Showers Bring

“In the depths of winter, I finally found there was in me an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus

As has become my habit these days, this month’s desktop wallpaper calendar has woefully missed the mark. I started the process of determining a theme in plenty of time. I really did. The execution was the step where things fell apart. I had determined to use the common phrase, “April showers bring May flowers,” as inspiration for the design. Given the facts that we reached mid-month with no motivation in sight, and the rhyme implied an obvious correlation, I decided to give you a combo April/May version. Sort of the surf and turf wallpaper variety. (Only no surf and no turf.) Just point – click for the supersize version.

I think my Mama may have used that rhyme on one of her Spring bulletin boards. She was an elementary teacher, and therefore professionally obligated to hang all kinds of cute and inspiring things on her walls. It’s a familiar phrase, and in my neck of the woods, April often does bring showers with its windy days. I’ve always thought it was a courageous (and impressive) statement to make. Finding the faith, hope and vision required to see flowers in the midst of dripping rain is not always an easy task.

I’ve realized through hard experiences that there is no more devastating a process than reaching the conclusion that a situation you’ve invested yourself in is hopeless–incapable of fulfilling the hopes of your great expectations. And, whether the situation is in fact hopeless or not doesn’t always matter. It’s the reaching of the conclusion that shakes us, especially when those hopes are so intricately entwined with the core of who we are and what we want our lives to be like. It wears us down. It disappoints us. It sickens our hearts. It shatters our assumptions. It rattles our confidence in ourselves. It challenges our view of who we are and who it’s possible for us to be. No, being hopeless and in despair because of it isn’t often something to which we aspire. That situation doesn’t usually make the “bucket list.” However, I imagine that when any of us come to kick the vessel of life we’ve been given, we’ll each find that hopelessness factored in at some point on the journey. It’s just a part of the pageant sometimes.

Standing in a rainy downpour, it’s hard to see the flowers expected a few weeks down the road. It’s hard to see for the dripping in your eyes right now. In the storm, it’s hard to envision the blossoms as anything more than washed out ground. It’s hard to believe they are germinating. It takes quite a lot of courage to know they are.

There is an inescapable joining of faith and hope. A connection. For hope to be sustained regardless of disappointing situations or people or actions, we need assurances, evidences, signposts. We need faith–an “invincible” faith that lets us KNOW our deepest hopes will somehow be realized. Of all the books and philosophies and conversations I’ve been privy to in my following of faith, the most exquisitely simple definition I’ve found is this:

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (hebrews 11:1)

Faith makes hope reliable. It gives it credibility. And, let’s face it. In the midst of the showers (and depths of winter), we need to know our hope is more than fool’s gold. We need that credibility. It makes it possible to see what isn’t apparent. It shows us May flowers during April showers. It gives us the “invicible summer” that Camus articulated. And, amazingly, it’s revealed right there by the real foundation of any working faith, God Himself. Faith is to understand and rely upon our God, knowing that in His wisdom and might and bigness, and despite any circumstance or choice or shortcoming, He can sustain and govern the fulfillment of that deepest hope in us.

We hope for the flowers, for the flowering of our lives in ways we’ve imagined, in ways we’ve assumed were possible. And, in the downpour of disappointment, we can still know the blooming is on the way.

Faith. And hope. I want to live in that place where I know what the showers bring. I’ll get there.

Spring Forward

The time has changed. At least that’s what I call it. I did remember to move Mickey’s big hand forward, thankfully. The whole concept of “losing an hour” is always hard for me to adjust to, but I love the resulting presentation of daylight in the afternoon. That one little extra hour of light that progressively grows makes me feel like I have a whole extra day at the end of the normal work day. It’s an unmistakable sign of Winter’s end.

It’s getting to be Springtime in Mississippi. Each year in March, we begin that yearly flirtation with warmer days, sunnier skies and the emergence of color. The emergence is my favorite part. Yesterday, I took advantage of one of the few sun-sightings we had during the day and went out to photograph the Bradford Pear tree in front of my house. Bradford Pears are spectacular in Spring and Fall, but their Spring display always seems to be most welcomed to my spirit–probably because it brings a break from the gray of January and February. The white blossoms against bare brown branches are always a visual display of Winter’s dormancy giving way to Spring’s flourish. The buds are beginning to open and spread the surface area of their petals to soak up the sun. Soon, the green leaves will accompany them and the blossoms will fall away, having done their part in initiating Spring.

I find blossoming to be quite courageous.

Perhaps it’s Nature’s discipline in performing the task so resiliantly year after year that makes us take blossoming for granted, that makes us assume it is effortless. But I’m convinced that in the plant world and in the soul’s world, the courage to bear your color against the gray sky and prickly bramble and bare branch is remarkable. It doesn’t happen without pushing, withstanding, unwrapping, exposing, releasing. Whether it’s the first new blades of yellow-green grass that push their way through the straw-like ground or the rising stalk of a hyacinth bulb inching through a tight cluster of thick leaves, blossoming requires effort. In search of light, bulbs and new grass deliberately and patiently push through the hard and rigid ground to reach the surface, to break free from the dark earth. That journey is one of courage, to be sure.

The buds on my Bradford Pear have been there, lying dormant, for months now. In a tightly held cone of velvety leaves, they’ve been waiting for the right time. It happens that way every year. And somehow, taking their cues from the promise of sunlight and warmer temperatures, they choose when to unfold, when to begin that process of revealing themselves as the pink-tinged white blooms they are inside. As if simply surviving the dormant season wasn’t enough, they gently, consistently and methodically release the tightly wrapped surfaces to expose their petals to sunlight.

Although I’m half a month behind, the blossoms in my front yard served as inspiration for March’s desktop wallpaper calendar, just as they provided inspiration for my own state of flowering. And despite my tardiness (again), this day when we “spring forward” an hour seems the perfect time for my own call to spring forward. [If you need that inspiration as well, just point-click the image to get a full size copy.]

This season of beginning to save the daylight offers a new opportunity for blossoming of spirit. It creates the backdrop for new seasons of growth, revealing the true color lying dormant beneath the surface. I’m ready. But, I’m also realizing through the Bradford’s lessons that this new season requires my deliberate attention. Blossoming, indeed flourishing, doesn’t just happen. Like the grass seed, it requires resistance and persistence through my own rigid ground–those areas where I might meet with obstacles or misunderstanding. Like the bulb, it requires the expansion and cracking of the bounds in my own confined spaces–those areas where I have become complacent, accepting of my own seeming limitations. Like the bud, it requires the shedding of my own layers, my own willingness to open closed places–those areas where I’m tightly held and fearful of exposure. Spring brings the emergence of something new in defiance of Winter’s gloom. Do I have the courage to emerge? What am I made of? What’s inside? It’s time to show my colors.