The Fiery Colors of Living

We sat last night on our patio with the 47 family, captured in Colorado's near perfect net of crisp mountain air and warm autumn colors. It occurred to me, sitting there, that those cantaloupes, sages, burnt embers, and goldenrods of our backyard grove wouldn't be there tomorrow. Not precisely. Not the same hues. By morning - heck, even by nightfall - leaves will have fallen, wind-shaken by the same breeze chilling our skin the same way it was chilling the remaining foliage into still deeper shades before they, too, drifted away to places unknown.

Instantly, the mind vault pulls James 4:14 from its depths: "Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (ESV) Rather gives new meaning to the sentiment "Here today, gone tomorrow", yes?

But in what way is that not true? I mean, what moment can we possibly recapture? I can't go back to the whimsy of childhood or time travel to the beach at the moment I whispered "I will." I can't relive the first time Craig said he loved me; the first moment each of our children took breath or slip inside the second we knew our other's ceased. Nor, truthfully, would I want to. We must capture it in the now because it's the now that gives it worth: the reliving is just the memory's shallow grave of event without the emotion that first made it alive.   

Last night, it may have been the season's finery rushing me to reflection, but it was the people that made that moment alive. It was my beloved to my left or my Zee diagonally across. It was her guy to her right and two other of the best couples I know surrounding. It was the loved ones absent yet fondly included. It was the presence of friendship and the life it brings to that - and every - moment.

In this season of my life, I am changing. I know that I am changing. Awareness of it puts butterflies in my stomach and weight upon my chest. I am learning, among other truths, that I need to live more fully in the moment. To refrain from analysis and worry and too-close inspection of what would otherwise simply be. Recently, on Facebook, my status read, "If you want to be happy, be." (Thanks, Leo Tolstoy: that sentiment's way easier to grab than War and Peace.)

I'm going for the moment these days. I'm getting better at being. 

I'm finding rest. 

Ease. Peace.

In the moment. 

In the being.

In the fiery colors of living.