Change

Seasons change.  One moment we are hanging out in a season enjoying the elements and dynamics, and then quickly we are in the next.

We have no control over the changing of the seasons, they come whether we are ready for them or not.  Seasons usually go by the calendar, we can expect the change.  But occasionally the next season leaps toward us and envelopes us long before we suspected it to come.

Most times, even without a calendar, when we head into another season we can feel it.  The air smells different, the light changes, plant life begins to fade or buds begins to grow, fruit sets, fruit ripens.

Dirt and I and all of us here at Victory Farm & Gardens are heading into a new season.  The apples are nearly full size and changing color.  The berry vines are changing color.  The air feels different.

The light plays different. Feelings and emotions change. Space changes.  Hearts change.

Fall isn’t the only season, the only change, Dirt and I are moving into.  Years ago our oldest daughter married, a year later we became grandparents, that was a big change.  Three years later our second daughter married.

And now our youngest is marrying.  Yes, she is the goof ball in these photos.  For every serious or at least acceptable photo, there are countless knuckle-head hammy-schmammies.  She even turned her trip into a ham, unfortunately I clicked on the trip and missed the recovery.  She tripped because she was goofin’.

It is a big change for Dirt and myself and for her sister Bet too.  We’ll have a bit of a quieter life.  A bit more space, a few less shopping trips, fewer phones ringing, fewer laughs.  We’ll miss her something fierce.

But the biggest change will be the change in Anna.  She isn’t just going off to a new life, with a new name.  She is about to become a different person.

Our Creator created woman for man.  And He said at creation that the two become one flesh.   When people enter into marriage, God takes two creatures and makes them one.  Amazing.

We say the words, we think we know them,  yet, we barely see it, can barely sense it.  But when we put our hearts in God’s hands fully and allow Him to teach us, we begin to see and feel the change. 

The change is there whether we acknowledge it or not.  It would be like trying to deny that fall is coming.

When we deny that we are a new person, that we are forever a part of another, changed forever, we are denying to our detriment.  When women, or men, desire to have the companionship, relieve the loneliness, seek a mate and marry, yet refuse to acknowledge that they have changed to the degree they have, it would be like running around in shorts and a tank top in midwinter, in Alaska.  A bit frost bitten and uncomfortable.

The season has changed and nothing we say or do makes it not so, but we can cause damage when we deny it.  God is the one who created us and created marriage.  He created the mystery that a man and woman become one flesh, that one is made from two. 

He loves us more than any earthly father or mother can.  He loves and cares for each of us .  Why would he do something that would harm us?  Why would He bring us into a mystery at our peril?  We do not loose something when we loose ourselves into another for life.  Not like when we drop a ring down the storm drain never to fetch it back again. 

We gain and we gain untold gain.  I would rather loose myself into my true married self than try to retain a false self, one that in God’s eyes no longer exists.  He says, the two shall become one.  I think He meant it.

There comes a time when parental love, no matter how good, is not enough.  I believe not unlike the searching for Him, he puts that desire into our hearts.  To find that person that we are to become one with. 

Being a parent is great and I would never trade in the life I have had being a parent.  But I can never, no matter how well I know my child, be one with any of them.  That is not my place nor Dirt’s.  That place is for another.

So yes, we will have a long and good life if we honor and love our parents all our days, but we are never one with them.  That mystery is left for another.  Beyond DNA, beyond our complete understanding, this is the mystery God has many of us participate in.

Dirt has lead his girls on through a wonderful life, they have a strong foundation in the Lord, and a good understanding of haying, but now we have entered into a new season with our youngest daughter.

A new name and a new being will be hers with someone who will know her like no other, not even her father and I, only God will know her better.

I know how that feels and it is good.

I was very late with my header post this week, nearly twelve hours, which is pretty good considering I have been running three or four days off in my head this week.  Funny, I think I am the queen of change but having Dirt home and shopping in town early in the week instead of later and I was off by several days in my head.  So I told the rest of the header challenge fellas to go on without me.  But you should go see what they came up with for this week’s header challenge of “change”.   So please go visit the other participants:  Dave, Fishing_Guy,  Mac, and Gail’s Man.  Say hi and how much you liked their idea of change.