Where has summer gone? Sometime between last week and this week, autumn crept in in full-splendored glory, with cooler nights and shorter evenings. Dusk falls at 7pm, and the sky is darkened by 7:30...in the next 3 weeks, daylight savings time comes to an end, and we lose an hour. Soon it'll be time to begin wearing sweaters, jeans and jackets and to give up summer dresses and shorts. The crispness of autumn will nip at our noses and ears, leaves will begin changing color and falling to the ground, and the greyness of winter will gradually take over our days.
It's not a sad thing to see these changes, but it brings home to me more than ever the fact that life changes, that I'm getting older, and that what's past can't be relived. Perhaps autumn is a time of introspection for me...a time to evaluate the year gone by, to see what I've accomplished and to realize what I have yet to do. In some ways it means saying goodbye to the halcyon days of summer, the lighthearted fun, the long evenings of sunshine, and in other ways it means the acknowledgement of another year gone by, the acceptance of growing older, and the realization that I'm approaching 40 and my youth is truly behind me now. That time in life known as middle age is around the corner, and it bemuses me.
I don't feel old...I really don't. If one was to ask me how old I felt, I would tell them 33. I feel 33. Why 33? I don't know...all I know is that it resonates within me, and I feel 33. I wonder if I'll always feel about that age, or if I'll slowly feel older, gradually aging until one day I feel 50. 50 seems so old, an age that shouldn't happen to me, and yet I know that God willing, one day I'll be 50. Will I look and act like my grandparents? Will I bow to the inevitability of aging and begin acting old? Will I become crotchety and contrary and allow aging to make me bitter? Or will I continue to feel younger than my chronological age?
If choices have any power, I've made them already. I'm choosing to be mentally young, to not let the physical aspects of aging make me old. I've decided to become an eccentric old woman...funny, kind, quirky, nice...I want to keep my hair long and wear it in a bun. I want to wear dresses and big floppy hats and make cookies for the neighborhood children. I want to speak my mind with kindness and make people laugh. I want to say shocking (not bad shocking...nothing that would be contrary to being a Christian) things to shake people's conceptions of seniors up. I want to live in a house with a white picket fence and a garden and pick flowers every day. I want God's love to shine through me and to be a blessing to all I know. I want to be one of the saints of the church, always smiling, telling others that "He does, you know", as one of the elders at my church did in his latter years. I want to continue to acknowledge the reality of sin and trials and tribulations but to always keep my faith in God and His goodness intact no matter what. I want to have a couple of cats as well as a dog, and I want the neighborhood children to love visiting me.
And so passes another year of my life...in some ways there haven't been many changes, but in others much has happened. God is good, and He's continuing to work in my life to bring growth and maturity. I believe that a time of harvest is approaching for me, and that I'll soon see the results of God's work in my life. It's exciting, but also means that a chapter in my life is coming to a close. Only time will tell what it is and when it'll happen...for now, I'll continue doing what lies before me and seeking to grow in Him.
