Don't fall into fear
I used to love the season of fall more than anything else.
The cool mornings.
The warm afternoons.
The pumpkin patch.
Planning Halloween outfits.
Trick or Treating.
Festive fall decor.
Pumpkin Spice... everything.
The first fall rain.
I still love fall, but perhaps not as much as I once did. We still do all the fun fall things, but I often find myself a bit on edge as October creeps in. My mind often wanders to fall five years ago.
When we go to the pumpkin patch all the memories are there. Even the memory of how I didn’t notice how thin she was getting as she hoisted her chosen pumpkin up. When we head out for trick-or-treating I remember how that one fall she had planned to go as a mermaid, but almost had to stay home because she kept getting short-term fevers that made me wonder if I had maybe taken her temperature wrong. As I drive to school, browning mountains and blistering Santa Ana winds remind me of driving endless trips to and from a hospital gazing at the same scenery.
When we went to the hospital to get to the bottom of the pain in her leg I was wearing my favorite fall shirt. It was what I was wearing when the oncologist told us it was leukemia and that was the last time I wore it. Each year I looked at the shirt still hanging in my closet and wondered if maybe this fall I’d put it on again. But I kept passing it by. I got rid of it last October.
Every time I think about how close we are to the five year mark, my stomach clenches and I grow anxious wondering if the next appointment will snatch that magic number five away from us. My breath catches every time her oncologist enters the exam room, breezes over to the computer like she does for every patient and says casually, “Everything looks good.”
It is so easy to fall into fearing what grace has already defeated on my behalf.
Today I re-read the quote below. I even printed it. Amen and amen. Not just for those sad memories that tainted our fall almost five years ago, but for this year. For this season. For all the heartache. For the division. The hurt. The hard ways we’ve walked. Amen and Amen.
“It’s so easy to forget that every trial sent your way is sent by a Savior of grace as a tool of grace to advance the work of grace in your heart and life. It’s so easy to forget that because your life has been invaded by the grace of the One who is the “I Am,” it is impossible for you to ever be in any situation, relationship, or location by yourself. It’s so easy to forget that God really does live inside you in the powerful convicting, protecting, and enabling presence of the Holy Spirit. It’s so easy to forget that God loves and accepts you no less on your worst day than he does on your best day. It’s so easy to fail to remember that because of the grace of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you are never left to the limited resources of your own wisdom, righteousness, and strength. It’s so easy to fall into fearing what grace has already defeated on your behalf.” — Paul David Tripp
Snippets of My Week
Back at making new memories this fall.
They are so proud to have graduated to have "Gear Bikes" (as they call them)
Changing our Friday afternoon routine this week by going to the park after school.
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