Changing Seasons: Seeds of Promise

---

I’ve been working on a family tree. It’s been fascinating, shocking, funny, and by all means revealing. For instance, I am a distant relative of Pocahontas. Isn’t that delightful!  Also my great, great, great grandmother was Mary Todd’s teacher for 4 years. She helped Mary perfect her French and taught her the dances of royalty. It was said of my grandmother that she was passionate about books and fond of her own opinions. Hmm.

The most frequent ancestral revelations can best be summed up in the old quote, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Our family, like yours, have recognizable attributes. My mom’s was physical brevity…all 4’ 10 and a half inches of her…which she passed on to all 5’ of me. Her naturally wavy hair, which I would have voted for and gratefully got, instead of my dad’s shiny dome.

However most thing’s of that nature we don’t get a vote on.

Tremors, a family trait, began for me a couple years ago when I would sign books at Women of Faith. It didn’t happen often and it didn’t last long. I talked it through with my doctor, but she wasn’t troubled by it, so neither was I. Now it comes more frequently, stays longer, and sometimes embarrasses me. I try to laugh it aside, make a joke, and carry on. That form of denial is also a family trait…and at times serves us well.

The tremor in my hands sends my alphabet careening across the page, they collide with each other like bumper cars at the fair. Letters once lacy with loops now meander and wobble in a most awkward manner.

Writers like symmetry, speed, and by all means control. (At least I do.) Then something enters our life that is wonky, scribbly like, and regardless of our finest intentions, ink spills over the edges of our carefully designed margins…and there is nothing we can do except watch pools form around our feet.

It’s a season….like Fall…

Golden yellow leaves with bronzed-undersides, dust the earth, they flutter about in Autumn’s breathy announcement that times are changing. Birds form caravans and cloud the sky with their feathery departures. The hummingbirds with their abrupt manners and honeysuckle breath, have already left. Perhaps because their journey is so long and they like to beat the traffic.

There are losses and gains in every season. Some we are eager for like caramel dripping off a honey crisp apple, oven baked brussel sprouts cozied up to a roast, or hot cocoa steaming in our fireside mug. But watching trees go bare, song birds pack up their hymnals and head south, and grass wither brown around our loafers…feels, well, kinda sad.

I don’t know what your changing season will bring, good or sad, but perhaps you’d like to join me as I look for, in the midst of our days, seeds of promise. They’re there. In every conceivable season. Sometimes they are asleep waiting for a divine awakening. Sometimes they are hidden under fallen leaves, protected from bitter winds. And sometimes they are the healing, inky-lavender pooling at our feet.

“For every season there is a purpose.”

---

Prayer

---

Dear Lord,
Thank you for autumn’s purple and gold adornments that prepare us for the crunch and sparkle of winter to follow. From one calendar page to the next we are aware of Your holy handiwork. And we pray you would give us eyes to also see that in our losses Your Spirit of love stitches worries into wonder and losses into legacy. You are teaching us that our sorrows in Your hands Lord Jesus, are seeds for a fruitful future. So during this season with its swirl of leaves and trembling petals, may we kneel often in Your presence and rise up awed by Your plans.

Amen

---

Books On My Nightstand

---

  

          

 

---

Sign Up to Receive Your Free Printable from Patsy

---

---

Want to read more from Patsy? Find what you’re looking for on Amazon.