Autumn, our way

Living in TX it's no surprise that we deal with some unbelievable heat.  While many of my friends and family back home on the east coast already speak of such things as changing leaves, cool evenings, and the smell of autumn in the air as we enter September, we've still been feeling temperatures of 105 and 108.  It's hot.  And humid!  But an interesting thing has happened this summer (well quite a few things if you're counting, but I'll just focus on a couple in this post) which has helped in the process of changing our hearts to accept our circumstances.
                                       

At the beginning of the summer we threw ourselves in the perverbial "oven" with quite a few life changes which I've spoken about before on this blog.  Since then we've been taking steps every day into a new life where we're doing what we love, discovering what we love, spending more time with our family, going for our dreams, and truly letting the persons we've created over the years to manage all the hurt and pain and dissappointment and fear die...and letting God resurrect the true us (which I believe is hidden deep within each of us already, we just have to allow those layers to be peeled back and destroyed to get to the good stuff).

That was in May.

Timing is everything.

Because then summer came.  And it really got hot.  We found ourselves sorting out our new life, working through so many different emotions, so on and so on, and the temp rose and rose and rose.



(pic from our trip to Asheville Nov 09')



But through it all, and this is the most important part, we've walked.  No no, I don't mean metaphorically.  I mean we've walked!  As many days a week as we can stand, all summer long, regardless of how hot it's been, we've walked.  We've loaded our kids in the double stroller, filled up the water bottles, bagged some snacks, and walked a two mile loop.  Over, and over, and over again.  We'll stop halfway and chug as much ice water as humanly possible and start again.  We've laughed, cried, argued, yelled, cussed, joked, figured out, gotten more confused, laughed some more, learned a lot about eachother and ourselves, and even lost some lbs.  So when it's been 100 day after day after day for almost 3 months, we've walked.  When 100 wasn't enough and we went into 105/106/107 territory, we've walked.  Then this last week a miracle happened and the temp went down to 96/95 and sometimes even 90 in the shade!!  And as we walked we realized something...if we had stayed inside all summer and avoided the heat, we wouldn't appreciate 95 degrees.  Low 90's would feel just the same as 100+.  But because we've been out there walking, we feel every degree of difference.  We know what it feels like in the furnace, and we feel the change.  We love, welcome, and appreciate the change.  The change is good.  And as a young boy growing up in GA and NC when Autumn starting coming, you felt it.  Everything started to change and there was nothing you could do to stop it, nor would you want to.  And now at 95 degrees we feel the change in so many different ways and the ushering in of a new season, and we're so happy it's here...and even more thankful we're alive and in tune to the difference.