The leaves are changing from that vibrant green to a crispy array of reds and oranges, and despite all their resplendent glory, I can feel my heart’s usual slowness to soaking in their splendor. I’ve never been that quintessential fall fanatic backed by all of Facebook, dreaming of flannels and fires and foamy pumpkin drinks. Despite the cooler temps and “fun” festivities like pumpkin carving (sticky), corn mazes (stressful), and costume parties (scary), I’m a summer girl through and through. Fall means that winter is coming.
And while I can eventually come to marvel at the colorful beauty of chlorophyll breakdown, I know that means the leaves are dying. A brilliant transformation before their final descent where they’ll be a stomping ground for squirrels or tossed into a fire, crumpled like confetti and then carried by the wind. The reminders of death feel invasive, cramping my comfort and causing me to confront the sobering reality that nothing in this life really lasts.
As if the leaves weren’t poignant enough reminders of my transience, it hasn’t helped that in three of the last four falls, we’ve buried my mom, my grandpa, and my dad’s only brother. One per year, always in fall. I’ve plodded over crunchy brown reminders of death on the frosted path to a hole in the ground where we’re laying our loved ones to rest. It feels like Hobby Lobby’s fall section should have, in calligraphy, the season of death.
It’s interesting, however, that these physical representations of transience have cast a pall on the season for me. Am I not in Christ? Is heaven not around the very next bend? Isn’t this transience — the heart-bolstering knowledge that this world is not my home — the very lifeblood of every believer? And yet I’m slow to celebrate it. Much like I don’t soak in the splendor of changing leaves, I seldom let my soul drink of that “eternal celestial nectar” that lies ahead (Ortlund).
How much smaller would the trials of this world seem if heaven were always on my mind? I could think of my home as a hotel rather than finding every way to be discontent about it. Perhaps I would truly come to see that small sum in our bank account as a futile fund with no false promise of being mine forever. I might even hold a bit less tightly to my agenda and timeline and fifty-year plan, knowing that this earthly body of mine will, much like the leaves, one day be a stomping ground for squirrels. Every pleasure I seek and possession I strangle is a mere sandbox, and I have a soul that is headed for the beach.
Perhaps this will be the year that the changing leaves spur change in me: reminders of death will be fuel to run fast to the finish, knowing this life is nearing an end. Every decaying deciduous tree will hopefully start to remind me of me as I embrace the aging I’ll carry to the grave. Maybe I’ll get excited about fall, because although winter is coming, so is heaven above all.
Ortlund, Dane. Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven. Crossway, 2026.
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