S8 E14: Layers + Leaves

The season of Fall is layered with lovely texture and colorful leaves.

And even though at times the change might appear to have happened suddenly the reality is that what is now becoming visible to our eyes has been happening for a while.

I remember several years ago when I entered a new season of spending more time creating art I had many people in my life ask me “Where did this come from”?!  And it wasn’t just a question in passing a lot of times…it was someone looking me dead in the eye waiting for an answer…so it got me thinking about this question… I mean I could see why many were asking…creating art in a few different ways was definitely where a lot of my energy was going. And I do think in the world we live in with social media when we share our life online people have a glimpse of things that in the past unless you did life on a daily weekly basis …they had no clue.

So as I looked back at my life I could see creativity sprinkled all through it. Did it look exactly like what I was putting my hand to in this season? No, but I could see that creativity looked different in almost every season and layer of my life. I could see that when my children were younger and my days were filled with feeding children and homeschooling my creativity was in full force around my everyday life.  As a family, we lived out the seasons of life creatively. Sometimes it felt like creativity in the midst of complete chaos, but I think we are all hard-wired divinely from our creator with the desire and gifts that wherever we find ourselves we are designed and gifted to bring order and beauty in the midst of chaos.  

I mentioned how I could see how creativity looked different in different seasons and looking back I could see that it was life inviting me into another layer of learning and living. My circumstances in my family or my work in the church offered me new experiences to learn and grow. And as is the case for most of us…we are so caught up in the moment of the season we are in that oftentimes we aren’t even aware of all that the layer is holding for us. It’s sometimes only in looking back that we see how we were being formed layer by layer.

And it’s in the looking back for me I become well aware that God has always been faithfully answering the true desires of my heart.  I see that what I sometimes thought was part of the plan actually wasn’t or it was for a season.

It was a layer.

A layer to be built on.

A layer to stand on and continuing building on

The thing about layers is that sometimes we think a particular layer is our life forever…

Or we can believe a layer in our past was the best ever and life is all downhill from here.

Why would we ever believe that lie?! 

It reminds me of how when you have a break up with someone you’ve been in a relationship with and you’re in that in-between time of feeling the loss and not fully moved on and experiencing the next…

So you text or reach back out (knowing it needed to end)

But all you are focused on and remembering are all the good times.

The beautiful moments

The special memories.

Let’s not do that with the layers in our lives.

Let’s be people who remember to honor and celebrate 

But also let's be people of hope 

That believe and trust a God

That grows us from glory to glory 

And invites us to an abundant life.

The layers of life are a delicate ebb and flow of dying and rebirth and growth.

Layers of letting go and growing.

I’ll end with a thought from the Autumn journal

The layers of life

Layers of dying and rebirth

A falling away + a growing

Woven together into our journey

The layers of life