Emotionally Healthy Spirituality | pictures of perfection

Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline; the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death… In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted… But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances – on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come.

Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Fall has always been an interesting season for me. Some of the biggest and most impactful events of my life have happened in September or October. The end of a relationship that I thought was forever. The beginning of a relationship that became my forever.

This year, it has been a season of recognizing some major things about myself that I need to work on. We have been seeing a therapist as well as diving into the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course by Peter Scazzero, and sometimes I feel like I am being ripped apart emotionally. Things from my past that I thought were long gone, had only been shoved down and left to fester. Definitely not an emotionally healthy practice, let me tell you.

As we have been talking about grief and loss in EHS, I’m recognizing that death isn’t just in the physical sense. For me, I have realized that I have experienced a death of part of myself in becoming a mother. I have given up so, so much for these little people. My knitting designs have been put on hold indefinitely, and I can’t even remember the last time I actually knitted something. Clearly, writing and blogging have been placed on the back burner. I’ve been able to keep a tenuous grasp on singing and music, thankfully, but even that can be stressful with the kids involved.

As I mourn this loss, I’m also learning that it is not a permanent one. As everyone points out to me, this is a season. My kids are only this little for so long. My son is two, and my daughter turns five next month. They are already growing up faster than I would like! While I still need to learn to take better care of myself, my situation is constantly changing. This ‘limit’ in my life is also a blessing. The things I learn about life and myself through my children’s eyes are invaluable. And the task put before me of raising productive, decent human beings is incredibly important. May I never lose sight of this truth.

In the meantime, I need to organize and put together the corner of our multi-purpose room that’s meant to be my crafty space. Anyone want to come babysit my kids while I work on that??

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 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 from embracing, 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.