Embracing the Fall Season
November 06, 2023 |
| Welcome Fall - at Penn Square, Downtown Lancaster |
I love the Fall season,
I love the cool weather and rain that accompanies it,
I love sipping on warm apple cider drinks and trying out baking recipes as an excuse to add heat to my apartment,
I love seeing the different shades of orange and mustard that we layer up with as we try to be in sync with the leaves.
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| By now you know that the school pond is one of my fav chill-out spots (most of my pics are usually from the other side) |
How beautiful is it outside - Fall is hands down my BEST season of the year. I was planning on sharing a couple of pictures from my photo gallery to showcase the lovely foliage at my school, Downtown Lancaster and my church...but ended up with a mini- sermon.
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| Loving the 'carpet' - Penn Square, Downtown Lancaster |
This past October, the weekly forum hour discussion at church jumped on the 'Halloween
bandwagon' by highlighting 'scary' stories in the Bible in a series dubbed
'texts of terror'. On the second Sunday, we discussed a dude called Jephthah -
not to be confused with Japheth, Noah's son who alongside his brothers Ham and
Shem are known for their role in 'the drunk naked father scene' of Noah's story
(no Hollywood writing room can make up stories like those in the Bible).
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| 'Oh God of all Creation'...just look at that amazing color mix - Scenes from school |
The
focus of our forum hour discussion was on how Jephthah asked God to help him win a
battle and in return he would give God the first thing that came out of his
house when he got home from the fight.
First of all, if you live with humans in
your house, why would you make such a promise?
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| Another angle of the school pond - can you see the transition from the green(grass) to the lime/yellow/orange (leaves) then the blue spread (sky) - always takes me out |
Secondly, if you are a soldier
coming home from battle, chances are, your loved ones will be the first ones to
come out to greet you. I am not saying anything but if you read between the
lines, this Jephthah dude sounds like a 'true crime show candidate'.
Anyway,
his daughter was the first one to come out to greet him...to be clear, we are not really told if he sacrificed her but we are led to believe that something happened...so yes, this story totally deserved to be in the texts of terror
series.
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| Loved this fountain 'burning bush' play (too much Bible?) - Scenes from school |
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| I am getting MAJESTIC vibes - More Scenes from School |
To my surprise, this
book is not about judges and lawyer types...it is more about people falling, and those falls setting the precedent for oppression, which is followed by crying out to God, God sending a leader (a judge) to the rescue…the people then experiencing beautiful Sunny days before they rinse and repeat aka fall again. The judges are
more of leaders/helpers/warriors, and some theologians call this book ‘the book of
cycles’ because it more about this pattern being repeated over and over in the
21 chapters that make the book.
| Had to get in the frame - Other side of pond in school |
I am currently in Chapter 10 (and there have been out of this world events in all these other chapters) and will be re-reading Jephthah’s story tomorrow (doing a chapter a day). Initially I was like -'why can’t you all learn from your past?’, ‘Why are we reading about your falls over and over and over again'...but as I continued reading, I started to see myself in these people.
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| Love that color - Downtown Lancaster |
Just because the things I repeat over and over are different, does not
mean I am any different. I, too, have done some things over and over again,
that anyone looking from the outside in would wonder, 'why can’t you all learn
from your past?'...'why are we reading about your falls over and over and over
again'...I bet Don's (my therapist) inner voice says these words silently.
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| Love it when it rains - Downtown Lancaster |
Lord knows
that I have vowed to never ever ever go back to some things or people,
especially after a season of shedding some premium tears. But when the pain died down, my two hands held the phone as I typed messages back and forth with
them, my two legs took me back to meet them...clearly who am I to judge these
people?
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| You have seen the inside of our church, this is what the outside looks like - can we talk about the red leaves |
Secretly I think this is why this book is called the Book of
Judges. We might come in thinking we will meet judges, then learn that the
people called judges were leaders/helpers but we, the readers, are the judges,
because we judge the people in the vicious cycles...and that should be cause
enough for us to step back and look at our own lives...I am just saying. (This
is one of the reasons I love studying the Bible - gold mine).
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| More scenes from church - love 'the mess' |
The bigger
question is, where do we go from here?
Clearly, at different points of this journey called life, we get stuck in this hamster
wheel of falling, crying, getting rescued, 'being healed' and falling again. In
my getting back to therapy post I talked about relapsing and how we learnt in
my Counseling strategies class that it is part of the healing process.
Sometimes we 'fall' because we have not yet gotten enough tools and skills to keep
ourselves in the next level or season of our journey...and there is nothing wrong with
that...it is part of the growth and healing process.
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| My 'neck of the wood' - Downtown Lancaster |
I am not saying that we should intentionally go towards the
fire, but if we find ourselves next to the fire over and over again, we should
not give up or let shame and guilt overtake us. Instead, let us gently
investigate the why behind the fall, behind the cycles, behind not 'getting
it'.
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| ...my semicolon tattoo - a reminder that the sentence would have ended but it still goes on...keep going |
And as we do that,
I pray that we give ourselves grace over and over again, just like God did with
this people.
I pray that we use the Fall seasons of our lives to re-member ourselves with ourselves - and God.
I pray that we have the courage to cry out for help - to
Him, to therapists, to our community.
I pray that we have the strength to release the
things that are meant to fall out of our lives.
I pray that we give ourselves permission to feel worthy of experiencing the
seasons ahead.
I pray that that the vocabulary of guilt and shame is replaced with accountability
and action.
Most of all, I pray that we do not give up,
…that we allow ourselves to rest and try again
tomorrow
...and if we fall (relapse), I pray that we remember that
that is part of the journey.
WE'VE GOT THIS!!!
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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