Moonflowers and Me

I want to paint a picture with both fine and sweeping brush strokes like the masters of old have done, but I am not good at that at all.  So I try here with syllables and whole words and I wonder if I dare even try?  But, stepping out into the air these past few days after the first passing of freezing nights and I see how much has changed for me.   I want to sort it out right here and now.  

It only takes one glance to miss those blazing red faces that met me each morning standing tall for the picking. The red zinnias are gone. Today they are devastated and look almost charred and abused.  The tangling vines that had my garden arbor and rails looking all gussied up for company each day, from my view now, look to  have succumbed to some awful fate as they only hang now, gruesomely by the death grip of their many, once tender tendrils.   And the parallels reach out and grab on like tendrils round my mind.

It's simple really.  It was not a plague or massacre, an attack or a mistake.  It came quietly as always. Just over night and under a nearly full moon it happened again;  the air changed.  The day before it blew fierce, forcing a change.........the air seemed like a weapon all day, yanking the leaves from the trees, tossing and throwing them,  pushing, pounding the farm and all of us.

It would not seem like much to me now except for the garden and the farm.  The response there I see is profound.  Life seems gone for death!--bursting red zinnias bitten and purged.  Moonflowers sort of melted on the rail, unrecognizable now.  "Response", that is all that it is.  My world has responded to the change in air.  

I do not like change. Especially when it seems to exchange beauty for ashes and life for some sort of death.   I have dreaded many of  them like a child dreading a vaccination.  My heart's plea is a quiet,  "No" and, "Please let it pass me by".   The cooler air told me that change was a comin', but I closed my eyes and imagined the sun.  The tall sons at the table tell me that little boy days are gone, but I close my eyes and remember bee bee guns and younger boys, sleepovers and tiny hands.  

But, it is time to respond to the changes in the air like the moonflower did;  like the tomato, the grape, and the zinnia.  It is o.k. for the vine to lay over and take it's winter's rest, right?   It is right for the Canadians to fly south and the bears know to enter their dens to sleep, yes?   It is right to respond to new times and seasons even if it is not our favorite.  Whatever time it is, He is there to help us and to delight in our good response.  

Some wise man once said that there was a time for everything under the sun.  He said it like this many moonflowers ago:  

 For everything that happens in life—there is a season, a right time for everything under heaven:

2     A time to be born, a time to die;
        a time to plant, a time to collect the harvest;
3     A time to kill, a time to heal;
        a time to tear down, a time to build up;
4     A time to cry, a time to laugh;
        a time to mourn, a time to dance;
5     A time to scatter stones, a time to pile them up;
        a time for a warm embrace, a time for keeping your distance;
6     A time to search, a time to give up as lost;
        a time to keep, a time to throw out;
7     A time to tear apart, a time to bind together;
        a time to be quiet, a time to speak up;
8     A time to love, a time to hate;
        a time to go to war, a time to make peace.

Ecclesiastes 3

What time is it for you and for me?  Embrace it and respond.  ♥