Autumn is a beautiful season. There is bright color, as though the leaves are giving their last hurrah before they drop onto the ground. Sometimes I feel full of joy, walking my streets and enjoying the beauty around me. Other times, though, there’s sadness layered there. The trees and flowers are winding down, preparing for a long sleep toward winter. There’s a musky smell in the air and the smokey scent of burning leaves.

My first book was launched in the fall and I am taking it on a book tour next week. I haven’t looked nor read it for a long time and last evening, I thumbed through it to remind myself of what I wrote seven years ago.  As I read, tears began to fall. It brought me right back to the past.

My first husband, Bill, had died two-plus years earlier, and I was full of joy. I would soon marry my fiancé, Blair. Yet, I penned these words:

Sadness is only a layer away……..I will enjoy Your blessings, knowing You are with me in the good and bad.

A sob caught my throat as I gazed at the pile [of the belongings of my late husband].

(Second Chances At Life and Love, With Hope, September, 2012)

 

Later in the book, I experience more grief when my second husband dies suddenly after only seventeen months of marriage. I was shocked that it hurt just as much to lose a husband whether I was married forty years, or seventeen months. It was so hard…..yet again throughout my period of grief, I was reminded of God’s holy presence in my life.

My mother wisely reminded me as we sat together in her little apartment at the retirement home where she lived.

Sometimes we have to move forward when we don’t want to….. 

(Second Chances At Life and Love, With Hope, September, 2012)

She knew after all. She’d been widowed twice, too.

As I close my blog today, I sit at my desk and see the lightening sky. It promises a new day with some sunshine and most likely rain, too. Jim and I are waiting for the announcement of our first great-grandbaby. He and his mama, Taylor, are laboring at this very moment.

Even though it is the season of dying leaves, a time preparing for hibernation, we have hope for new life. I can say with honesty, God is good.