Hello Autumn 🍂

Megan asked me why I decorate for Autumn, but not Spring or Summer. She feels it’s unfair on the other seasons that they don’t get their own display. I said I decorate for Easter, which feels like essentially celebrating Spring, and in Summer we are too busy being outside enjoying the sun and sea. Winter has Christmas to brighten it up. But Autumn feels like it needs a gentle hello as it ushers in its darker nights and wet days and dying trees and sense of loss.

Truthfully, I feel like my body and my mind sense Autumn and anxiety rises. For five years in a row, September came and with it came loss.

8 years ago this month, we said our first hard goodbye to a little foster person.

The following Autumn, we did another heartbreaking transition of a little one we loved.

The next two Septembers brought two more moves of two precious babies to their forever homes, joy and grief intertwined.

And then 2016. Much of that October I spent by Theo’s side in hospital, in HDU, and then nursing him back to health at home, in between Maddie’s physio sessions and an adoption assessment. It felt hard and wearing and never ending and scary.

And then.

And then Dan died.

The hardest of goodbyes. That kind of loss doesn’t have silver linings. You wake up in the morning and there’s a stomach sinking sickness. A heart hurting chest pain. The feeling that all the hard stuff had been building up and up, and this was the peak of pain that would last as long as I did.

But grief, as everyone promised, changes with time. Life grows around it and although the pain is real, there are days when it is huge and tear jerking, and there are days when it’s a quiet pain, a dull ache, poignant memories, and life surrounds it – sometimes joyfully, sometimes suffocating it by not giving it room to be felt.

September is always the month of new routines, tired children, weather changes. But this year brought the added challenges of no school bus, extra long transitions for children who’d missed half a year of school, or whose anxiety levels were through the roof. Then there were illnesses. Trying to speak to GPs. The stress of whether to test or not test. The potential implications of doing it or not doing it. A weekend isolating the whole family whilst we waited. Emails to schools, social workers, health professionals. Application forms and budget sums. And then, as September came to an end, the news of a local lockdown.

My body shows the anxiety even when I don’t recognise it for what it is. Shoulder pain. Jaw ache. Chest tightening.

And finally the tears came and with them the sense of being done. I’ve looked for good for sixth months and I’m done with it now. This just is rubbish. All the fun things are gone. I cried for a day and talked to family and friends and God. I was afraid. What if this is another year where we face loss after loss and hard thing after hard thing and then it gets even worse? I don’t think I can do it anymore.

And then the next morning I read these words, quoted by a woman who truly knows suffering, written to her by a man who lives it too.

“To inspire (used nonreflexively), from the Latin inspirate, has of course the stem spir in it. It is, very literally, to give or put spirit into someone. To inspire someone is way more than making them happy or amazed or even making them feel good. It is to lend them spirit when they are short. And of course because of the incorporeal nature of both air and spirit, the act of inhaling also becomes known as inspiration. In that sense too: it is like mechanical ventilation for a soul that’s lost its resolve for a moment.” (From I Am by M Cushatt).

That morning I went for a run, the first one for several weeks since I’d been ill. And I got to the bottom of the first hill and thought about how it was going to feel impossible, and thought about the act of inhaling. Every run I’ve done, that first hill makes me think I can’t do it. But I’ve learned to just keep going. To aim to get to the next minute or the next landmark. And to breathe slowly. To inspire.

Those words in the book struck a chord – ‘a soul that’s lost its resolve for a moment.’ That was me. I needed inspiration for getting through a dreary looking Autumn. I needed fresh air in my soul, to keep me taking the next step, to keep plodding until the next landmark.

And if I stop for a minute I find it. In the words of the book I was reading. In the love behind the messages in my phone. In the old hymn that popped up on my Facebook memories. In the stories of people who’ve faced with courage much greater hardship than I have these six months. In the history of people who messed up and gave up and God gave them the breath and the words and the grace and the courage to keep going. Moses and Jacob and David.

And in Jesus. The Man who left His throne and knelt crying in a garden, asking God if there was any way this could be done differently. But because of love, He did it. Faced the worst pain, the greatest loneliness, the agony of death. To bring life. To give breath. To send His Spirit. ‘…and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’ – 2 Corinthians 3:17

As I ran slowly I realised that true inspiration doesn’t come from the creative Instagram accounts I follow, or the stories of success I envy. I need the kind of inspiration that gives life and hope and purpose. And the kind of inspiration that makes me want to share hope with others whose reserves are running low. To reach out and help someone else along.

I’ve had this post half written for a week and not shared it because I was aware my last few posts had been about the hard stuff. Honestly, I was trying to find something upbeat or funny to write but then I realised that I just needed to be me, and to be honest. This Autumn isn’t how any of us thought it would be, and some of that is hard. And it’s ok to acknowledge when we’re struggling. Sometimes my greatest inspiration comes from the people who are real and vulnerable and who don’t hide the hard stuff but speak it out and cry it out and pray over it and get up and keep going.

So we made it through September, and then yesterday I dug out my Autumn decorations and bought a pumpkin and we found acorns by the river. And we laughed at the way Theo says ‘liter-tea’ instead of literally, and how Micah woke me up the other night when he was in our bed because he was in fits of giggles at Liam snoring. And then he tried to copy it, and made himself giggle again.

And I stopped to be grateful that two of my kids are getting amazing support from deputy head teachers who genuinely care. And that in these wet days we have a warm home and food on our plates and that there will be brighter days to come. And I was grateful for inspiration in all the ways it comes, for life and hope breathed into my weary soul to lift my feet to take another step forward. For prayers answered and promises kept and hope renewed.

Hello Autumn 2020. We’re ready for you.