How do the leaves know when to change color?

When I was a kid, I always loved the anticipation of a new season. The changing of the season meant the start of things I loved...Fall meant soccer season, birthday presents, and hunting season (Yes, I know...stop looking shocked...I've known how to shoot a 20 gauge since I was 12). Winter meant basketball season, Christmas stockings, and snow tubing. Spring promised tulips and Easter egg hunts. Summer brought fireworks, swimming parties, and concerts in the park.

Now still that kid plus give or take 20 years, a small part of me still loves the excitement of the new season. But more and more, I find myself wishing the current season would last a little longer. I wish the fall leaves in their glorious shades of crimson, orange, and gold wouldn't have to fall. I wish the first snow perfectly white, pure and peaceful, could be saved from the mud-caked boots and slushy car tracks. I wish I could stare at the Christmas tree glistening with its tiny twinkling lights without ever having to figure out how to take it down. I wish the tulip bulbs could somehow freeze right after they bloomed, but still manage to hold that brilliant color and fresh scent that promises new life. I wish I could keep watching summer sunsets with their shades of dusty rose fall into the black sea mirror, dreaming with my eyes open and my feet buried in the beachy sands, with only my old blue hoodie to keep me warm.

But I've lived long enough to know that all the wishing in the world won't take you back to last season, won't fast forward you to the next season...or even make the present season last longer. Sometimes, I imagine my life as a Shakespearian tragedy...I arrive someplace new (set the plot)...I hate it and wish I could go back to where I came from (conflict)...Friends help me overcome conflict and I come to love the new place (climatic build up)...Something inevitably happens to make me move and start all over again (tragic ending).

Change. At times, I think its the only constant thing about life. As a kid, I welcomed it. Later, I wished I could stop it. Now more and more, I just ponder it...is it ever the right time to let go of people who have become the other half of your heart, to leave places that have changed how you see the world, to move on from something you have invested so much of yourself...

Despite everyone's perception of my extreme extrovert personality, nature and its beauty is my retreat...the place I seek in solitude, where in passing moments, the fog lifts and clarity emerges from life's impressionism...

...How do the leaves know when to change color?

...How do the geese know to fly south for the winter?

...How do the tulips know when to pop up in the spring?

I've always loved Solomon's thoughts on the matter...

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;

yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Change...timing...the journey...seasons of life...so much of it is a sandy mystery that falls through my grasping hands...and yet, somewhere in my heart of hearts, I know that God makes everything beautiful in its time.

I want to live in the reality of today. Not in the mistakes of yesterday or the worries tomorrow. I don't have it figured out by any means, but I wake up each day wanting to cherish the beauty of today.