Wednesday's Words and The Year Without Halloween

Have you ever noticed as you get older that your memories become like a tunnel? With every change of season or every birthday or holiday come around again, you can see in your mind all the way back to that first one and each one since. It's lovely, right? I think so anyway.

Halloween is not a particular favorite of mine, but I love how much fun the kids have with it: picking out costumes, wearing them for at least a week before and maybe after too, carving pumpkins. Some of my very favorite pictures of the kids are the ones of them posing with their pumpkins on the steps of our house. Their wonderfully weird little personalities always come out the best in these Halloween pictures for some reason.

This year, Halloween was on a Monday that was such a Monday. It came after a stressful weekend with guests in the house, an unfortunate incident involving my young boy and a cell phone, grouchy, grouchy children, a sick and irritable Husband, a stressed and irritable Me... Pumpkin faces were designed Sunday evening and Husband carved them dutifully, but no one seemed to care. We didn't take pictures with them and when Monday rolled around and unfurled a little worse, we didn't even go trick or treating.

This morning on our walk, I looked sadly towards our now drooping pumpkins, looked down my tunnel of Halloween Past and hoped for a better time next year.

On Sunday evening after the kids went to bed, an email arrived in my inbox featuring a week long Bible study focusing on anxiety. I am in the midst of a year long, chronological study of the Bible, which I am sure will come up later, but since I was feeling particularly anxious, I figured it couldn't hurt to add this to my daily readings, so I clicked on the plan.

I almost cried reading the verses for the first day. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

"My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah."

Psalms 62:5-8

Before I put my Bible away, my eyes fell on another verse and I clutched it and took it to bed with me as a prayer:

"Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of the enemy." 

November, November

"It was November -- the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines."

At 30 years old, I have discovered Anne Shirley. I am enchanted, to be sure. I can't remember feeling this way about a set of books or a character in a very long time. Words like lovely and delightful and wonderful spring to mind when I think about the Anne of Green Gables books. I finished Anne of the Island late last night, with a deep sigh.

Novembers in the deep south don't seem quite as romantic as Anne describes - we're lucky if it's cold enough for a jacket by Thanksgiving and most of the birds stay all year long, I think- but November is my favorite month. To start with, it's my birthday month. But aside from that, it does bring to mind orange and brown falling leaves, crisp air on my cheeks, pumpkin pie, and so much more, none of which I have any good words for. I love November.

A lot has happened in the last three months since I last bothered to write anything. I thought I might write about some of it today, but when it comes down to it... it's the kind of life happenings where there is everything to say and nothing at the same time. It's more a gut clenching feeling for me than anything I can share, so I might as well leave it for now.

Instead, I suppose I will leave you with this little gem of a line from the moment Anne realized (thankfully, finally!) that she could never marry Roy:

"To her came one of those moments when we realize, as by a blinding flash of illumination, more than all our previous years have taught us."