Day 37 : Lose to win

I walk outside and get smacked by that fragrance that goes alongside autumn; a musty, cool, smoky, fresh-dirt aroma. The recent wind and rain knocked lots of leaves off the trees, and now as things dry out, the fallen leaves contribute their scent as the ground moisture evaporates.

Don't you love that smell? It’s part of the mystique of Fall; nostalgic, homey, reflective, and hopeful. 

But, it’s the smell of death – dying, decaying leaves.

Be the tree

If I was one of the leaves, I might see it differently – I'm dying! And starting to decompose! And you LIKE the smell of my dying?!

And if I was the tree, I might see it still another way – The cold and shorter days have made these leaves useless to me. If I don't drop them, new leaves won't be able to come next spring, and I'LL die.

If the old doesn't go, the new can't come. Leaves can’t be born on trees already filled with foliage. The tree would be crammed with leaves, mostly dead ones, and the new ones would choke, trying to live alongside death.

Scary, but good

If I was still there in Texas, I wouldn’t be here in North Carolina. And I didn't know what I could gain until I lost what I lost. The change was painful, like a death, but the smell was beautiful.

When you were a kid, and your family moved to a new town, all you knew were the friends you were leaving behind. All you could feel was loss. There was no way to know the new friends you would make, until you got there and made them.

It's the same with habits, diets, kids growing up, spending money, using time, work careers, and lost elections. And hope.

Every Fall you watch and enjoy the death of billions of leaves. The removal of the old is necessary to make room for the new in spring.

Death may be final, but it can be the start of a new thing not possible until the end of what came previously 

Are you seeing loss and death, but missing the hope?

-----

Thanks for reading. To read 31+ Days of Scary Hope : encouragement to go from IS to COULD BE from the beginning, click HERE.

Comments

[TheBossyMom]

I've never thought of it this way before, seeing it from the tree's perspective. Excellent post!