Autumn Memories – The Good and the Bad

I love Autumn. I love everything about it. The smells, leaves changing and crunching beneath my feet, going to a GA Tech football game, bundling up, chili on the stove, pumpkin candles. Everything.

I was just thinking how in four Autumns, so much has changed. I am a reflector by nature and now as Autumn rolls in each year (even in SoCal), the memories flood me. The cool air and change of season blow in with it memories so vivid I can touch them. Especially memories about building our family.

Four years ago today, I was just starting the last assisted cycle of my fertility treatments and wrote about it here. Would you believe I remember exactly what the sky looked like that day? And what the weather was? Sunny and gorgeous. I was in a bad place. A really, really bad place. But at the same time I realize though I felt God was as far from me as he possibly could be and had checked out of my life, He was as close as the next breath I drew.

How limited my perspective was. God was at work all around me, but at the time, it didn’t seem so. I felt like he had withdrawn his presence from me and I looked for Him like one looks for a lost dog. I put up signs in my heart. Have you seen my God? I longed for Him and His presence again.

As the weather changes, I am drawn to reflect too on the very next Autumn. The change in weather instantaneously brings back memories of the days surrounding Grant’s birth. I delivered a healthy baby boy. I loved being pregnant; it was magical for me. I truly cherished that hard won pregnancy. The leaves were so crisp and beautiful in that Georgia November 2008. It was a chilly, sunny beautiful day – the day he was born. And even now, I realize God redeemed that horrible previous Fall.

And then there was last Autumn when we had our sweet Hudson. A California Fall and whole new memories. I saw God bring great joy in giving us him so surprisingly and so thoughtfully during an incredibly hard transition here. I was falling apart, honestly. And he was a blessed distraction. A symbol of God’s grace and POWER! I wasn’t even “supposed” to be able to get pregnant much less carry a baby to full-term. And here he was – a surprise! Quite the contrast from three previous Autumns.

Autumn also brings with it a whole new bout of homesickness each year. I really miss the Georgia Fall. I know what I am missing and it makes me sad. I think I also grasp for some touch of Fall (which there is today!) here that will allow me to go back in time and relive those memories – good and bad – and reflect and remember. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it is a time in my life that I can truly mark as seeing the faithfulness of God from one season to the next.

Someone recently asked what I gained from going through all of that. I paused and then said, “perspective.” I now have perspective to see that God is always at work behind the scenes. He’s never gone dark. He’s always plotting and planning and working to bring glory unto Himself through the display of His might in our lives. And not just might in the sense of His mountain-top miracles. But in the sense of clinging to Him with the one last ounce of strength we have or running back to Him after a time of shunning Him – once again acknowledging Him despite our pain. That is His might in our lives.

So in four Autumns a lot has changed. Infertility, two babies, selling a house and moving to the other side of the country and essentially starting completely over. And today? I’m grateful for cooler weather and a taste of home that beckon memories of God’s silence and shout of His goodness.

Thank you God for my two Autumn babies!