–At least there would be frost on the pumpkin if we had any pumpkins in the garden this year. The grass was white this morning. So I hunted up a last year’s picture of my angel trumpet plant because this year’s plant got frosted last night before it had a chance to bloom. I should have covered it up, but who can remember everything? Well, some people but not me.
–But the frost is a chilly reminder that makes us pay attention to the change of the seasons. We need to take a little time to enjoy the spectacle of red and gold leaves before they all drift down. Some of us will have to get out the rakes or leaf blowers and others of us will just enjoy walking through the leaves in the woods in the fresh, crisp October air. At night the stars look brighter in the night sky and in a few weeks there’ll be a harvest moon. My dad used to go out on those moonlit nights in the fall and pick corn by hand all night long. Now farmers have machines that pick whole fields of corn in the same time as he might have picked a few rows.
–Just as the seasons change, so do things in our lives. People move to new houses or towns. Kids have to change schools. We start new jobs or learn new operations at our old jobs. Babies come along to change couples into families. New people come into our churches. Sometimes so many that the churches have to build new buildings.
–Change comes to writers too as they craft their stories. They live with a story for months, even years and then finally manage to write the words “The End.” Sometimes it’s hard to leave behind the characters you’ve lived with so long. But you change worlds in your minds as you leave one set of characters behind and go out into your imaginations to seek new people and new stories. A writer needs to embrace change. Not just from one story to the next, but within each story. Without change we wouldn’t have much of a story since change is what keeps the readers turning pages to find out what happens on the next page or in the next chapter.
–I read a writing advice piece once that posed the question, “What changes in your story?” And that person’s advice was “Everything.” At least your characters have to show some changes. That’s where I am right now. Figuring out my characters and wondering about the changes they are going to see and what the results of those changes might be. Is it going to cost them happiness? Or love? Maybe it will bring them love. That sounds like a happier ending. But for sure they aren’t going to be the same people who stepped up on my stage in the first scene. Nor will I be the same by the time I write “The End” one more time. Months will have passed. Life is a hands on experience. That’s the way the Lord surely meant it to be. The Bible promises us He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever more, but we are continually learning and thus changing. It’s how we’re designed.
–Hope you have some great life experiences this week and that your flowers escaped the frost so they can keep blooming a few more weeks. Looking out the window I can see my poor angel trumpet lily frozen and ruined. But I raise my eyes and the sun is lighting up the red and gold in the trees down the way. There’s beauty to each season.