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Wrecking Ball, Part 2: Lemons and Pumpkins

I’ve been fighting the urge to decorate for fall, the nearly-gravitational pull, despite the week-plus of 100-plus degree weather of late August in north Texas, to transform my summery home into a space filled with pumpkins & leaves (but never scarecrows, they creep me out), coziness in every room, scented by fall candles. It’s truly an effort for me to hold off to September 1, let alone the additional 3 weeks until actual fall.

While I anticipate, plan for, and love change in my home décor, none of us love massive change in our lives, especially when we are incredibly happy in the life we have (or at least we think we are).

You see, I can control the things that enter and leave my home, where they’re placed, which pumpkin graces which tabletop, which scented candle flickers on which counter, specially choreographed, setting atmosphere.

It’s a different matter entirely when circumstances in this sin-broken world bulldozes through and “redecorates” for me, razing things to the ground without even asking permission, changing everything. Wrecking ball, part two.

In the past 11 months, there’s been a lot of, um, “unscheduled redecorating”: Changing my good health to months of question marks, several diagnoses of weird things, ultimately followed by a diagnosis of chronic illness. Changing our circle of loved ones through the unexpected death of a dear, lifelong friend, just a few months older than me. Changing my daily routine as illness that overlaps every facet of my life snatched my career out of my hands, replacing it with hours on the couch, feeling useless, struggling not to feel isolated. My beloved oldest brother went from the picture of health, working out every day, to a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. Our nuclear family living within 40 minutes of each other was replaced with my youngest child moving 10+ hours away right before Christmas. One wrecking ball after another.

All of these events were out of my control. So many precious things removed, demolished. I was not consulted. I had not planned for one piece of this. Unpredictable is not my favorite flavor.

While change can be truly beautiful, unexpected change can be brutal. Pieces of my life I loved were removed, razed to the ground. Empty spaces staring back at me. And here I pause and try to see past the dust kicked by the demolition to return to my real-life analogy.

Before I can put up fall decorations, I have to take down all of my summer things. Not the most fun part for me, but necessary. I bring the Rubbermaid storage tub from the shed to my dining room, and put all the lemon-themed kitchen and family room things away, right next to them the red-white-and-blue summer items that grace the rest of my house. I have to clear the way before there’s room for the next season.

It’s a huge mess when I change my house over from one season to another. All my accessories from nearly every surface in the kitchen, breakfast nook, family room, living room, and dining room end up piled on the dining room table. This is not the best day to visit. So much bare space, just asking to be filled with something delightful. And asking for a lot of dusting where the cute accessories used to live. It’s only after I take everything down, ruining my cute summer vibes, that I can really clean out the spaces, dusting the nooks and crannies, wiping down surfaces long-neglected. Then I can better see where I want to place the fall things, which spaces should be filled with which treasures I have collected over the years, as well as new treasures just come home from Hobby Lobby. That’s when the new seasonality is created, in this case, warm, welcoming, and cozy, inviting people in to celebrate all the fall holidays or pause for a quiet coffee fireside. Well, maybe fireplace-side until the end of October or so. Taking out what is no longer suited to the season makes space for what is best suited.

When I put out my seasonal decorations, I do it all myself, by myself. I typically (with VERY few exceptions) don’t want any help. At all. Because 1. I love the process and creativity as much as I love the end result, and 2. I want the end result to fit the image in my head, my vision for autumnal splendor erupting in every space. I control the outcome. My family trusts me with this and knows I will make our home lovely, no matter what the process looks like mid-stream.

And here’s what is far more important than my fall decorations. This has been an incredibly hard season for me and for those closest to me. It’s taken me time and tears and prayer and processing to get here, with some very loving reminders from people who know me best, but this is truth:

We surrender to God, trusting him with our lives, and knowing His plans and vision for us are so, so good, far better than anything we could ask or imagine. He sees the bigger picture, the vision of our best lives, for our good and His glory.

Knowing what my house goes through with a change not nearly as profound, not nearly as vital, why wouldn’t it feel like a mess when God resets ME for a new season? And it has. But he won’t leave me a mess.

We trust that He is removing the things that no longer serve us well in the coming season, trust His cleaning out the dust that has accumulated, and trust that the pieces of our life that He will place in those empty spaces are custom-created and perfectly suited for His good and perfect plans. If He never redecorated and removed the things that were, there would be no room for things that could be. That should be.

We trust the new season that is just on the horizon. As I’ve walked through this time of change, this verse has resonated with me, reminding me to trust God’s redecoration:

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19

Lemons and pumpkins don’t work well together. As I remove one to add the other as August slips into September, though I don’t fully know what the “new thing” in the coming season will look like, how God is going to fill the spaces left by His “wrecking ball redecorating” of my life, I trust it will be a beautiful change, and perfectly suited to the next season He is opening for me.