I link up with Lisa-Jo on Fridays for a writing flash mob…throwing caution to the wind and gathering to share what a few minutes of free writing can buy.

Today’s topic: GRASP

GO.

I see the trees turning colors — minute by minute, hour by hour they change and become yellower and orangier and in about a week they’ll be in full glory casting a perpetual sunkissed-glow that feels like it lasts for approximately one minute.

I walked through these trees one day, feeling the warmth of the glow and in front of me one leaf fell. A sweet, yellow leaf gently fell from the half-green, half-yellow tree and billowed softly to the ground without a sound onto the graveyard of leaves lining the road that rustle and float with every passing car.

And I thought about that tree and how it had lost a leaf, a vital part of itself. Was it sad? Did it try to grasp onto that one yellow leaf for dear life, desperate to hold on to something since it had already lost so much? As it finally lost its grip and as the leaf fell did the tree silently cry?

There are days I feel like my leaves are falling everywhere and it’s painful and I’m trying to hold on with everything in me. Leaves of dreams and leaves of wishes and even branches full of habits falling softly and gently to the ground and I stand there with silent tears watching them fall. And I know it has to happen because without it there wouldn’t be the joy of new life and new dreams and new wishes and new habits.

It doesn’t make the pain of losing leaves any easier. But how can I stay mad when the Leaf Maker is the one directing the score? He is the Creator of not just the leaves but of the tree too, and His ways just aren’t mine.

So I watch that tree and I see her precious leaf fall with barely a whisper. And I whisper to her, “I know, me too.”  And as I walk away I look to the sky and see a hawk flying high above, alone in the sky. And I stand and watch him fly sweeping circles getting higher and higher, and realize that in the three solid minutes I stood there, that hawk only flapped its wings once. It soared effortlessly the entire time riding on the currents of the wind, climbing and climbing. And I realize I can’t climb while weighed down with unnecessary leaves. I can’t soar when my wings are continually flapping — desperate to do it on my own. Instead, I have to let go what I wasn’t meant to carry and let the currents of His wind carry me.

I have to grasp the Leaf Maker, not the leaf.

STOP.