grace from fall

sock season

This season is made only more delightful for how it recently reintroduced me to my socks.  

And while relishing the renewed warmth of my toes, I engage in the ritual chopping of veggies for large pots of bone-warming soup. The soup boils slowly on top of the stove, teasing the flavours together, until it’s hard not to notice the amazing aromas in every room of the house.

All the while, the gardens outside are putting themselves to sleep with only a few interventions from me. And what about those compelling bold, soft and subtle hues of a season that are urging us toward our own version of an eventual hibernation?

The slowing down of growing things and how we no longer tend to them is a grace-filled gift just waiting for us to unwrap. The clock seems to tick more slowly to allow more time for reflection on the moments of the day.

Gratitude is a beneficial tool for helping us to unwrap the gifts of fall

While simple in concept, gratitude needs some direction to make it concrete enough to be useful.

How about book-ending the day with gratitude?

• Before you get out of bed, before the busyness of the day, before your first relational conflict and before you create fantastical stories about the regular events of your day, name something that fills you with gratitude.

• And, just before you fall asleep at night, after a day of mindless tasks, surprise deadlines, disappointments and seemingly unsolvable problems, name something that fills you with gratitude.

Gratitude rewires your brain to notice what is working well in your life instead of focusing on the negatives.

Fall into autumn with a new, daily habit of gratitude!  Make a concrete, book-ending plan to see grace-filled results in your daily life. 

You will be grateful you did.