Just last week, I asked my friend, do other people get sad in the fall?
Sort of a weird question, I realized, after it fell out of my mouth.
She wondered at me for a moment, and then I think she knew what I meant. Or at least, she didn’t make me feel like a freak.
Sad may not have been the right word. The right word may have been nostalgic or maybe even full. The fullness of smells and sounds and chunky sweaters and pumpkin spice everything and always the change. The change of kiddos growing older, people gathering around tables, and for me, the tiny reminder that life will never again be what it is RIGHT now.
Sometimes, when life feels so full and good and beautiful and rich, I notice it, the longing.
**
Fall always seems to sneak up on me.
Nudged between summer and winter, it almost feels like a houseguest that never really settled in. And she is a beautiful guest, so aware of herself that she doesn’t want to overstay her welcome. Especially in Colorado, where we will likely have 80-degree days into October, but before you know it, the first snowstorm rolls in.
You wonder, where is autumn? She was just here, and then she’s already gone.
I think that’s what causes me to feel all the feelings in the fall. It’s a reminder of the brevity of our days, of our seasons.
It’s the moments in which we want to sit indefinitely, but we can’t.
Yet, there is some beauty in brevity, isn’t there? I wonder if we appreciate it more, when the moment is brief? Like a puzzle that lacks the last piece, our desires are touched on, but never fully satiated.
I believe the incomparable C.S. Lewis had it right when he said it like this:
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
When we strip it down, autumn reminds me of a longing for another world. It touches on a part of me that is satisfied and at the same time completely unsatisfied.
It causes me to ache for the space when the fullness of our hearts longings are met. For a space and time when pain is not woven into our days. For the moment when we don’t have to engage in the cause for justice, for all will be made right. For a day when families aren’t broken, the sick are healthy, and fear is a memory. Autumn reminds me we were made for the place where every tear is wiped away and hearts are finally whole.
This leaning toward wholeness is no accident in us. We crave it. We were made for it and a part of us will keep yearning toward it.
And maybe that’s okay.
Sometimes we need the reminder we were made for more.
