I've Got a Song to Sing

September 22nd. The first official day of autumn.

Fall is by far my favorite season. Every year I delight in the leaves changing from green to red and orange and yellow then floating to the sidewalk for me to step on and crunch. I love pulling my sweaters and scarves out of the closet and wearing jeans every day and sipping apple cider and eating pumpkin-flavored everything. I feel most alive when I step outside and the air is cool and crisp and sweet.

My friend Millie, speaking of autumn beauty, once said, "Isn't it interesting that the world is most beautiful in October, when it's dying?" As much as I will marvel at their beauty as they begin to change colors, the leaves are all dying, aren't they? They die so that there can be new life in the spring. Death brings life. Sound familiar?

My younger brother and I share a particular appreciation for this day, September 22, because it's the title of a favorite song of ours. The artist is Nathan Angelo, and the chorus goes like this:

"If blood's flowin' through my veins,

there's air to breathe, life to live,

then I've got a song to sing on this normal day,

September 22nd."

It's a great song. If you want to listen to the whole thing (which I highly recommend, because it's awesome), here's a link to the song on youtube.

That song always gets me pumped up and cheerful. On a normal day like today, I have a song to sing for the simple fact that I'm alive. And in autumn, when I go outside and breathe in the crisp air, I really am thrilled to be alive. The leaves are dying their sacrificial death, and it's beautiful, and I'm alive, and that's beautiful too. It's usually on the lovely days like today that I remember that life is full of goodness and delight.

But what about in the dreary middle of winter, when the trees stand bare, the cold bites, and the sunshine hides behind clouds for weeks? What about in the blazing middle of summer when the sun scorches, the humidity stifles, and the mosquitoes attack with a vengeance? What about on miserably rainy days? Am I grateful to be alive then? Do I sing then? It's not that I don't love all seasons or that I hate rain. Not at all. But the world isn't always beautiful, and neither are the circumstances of my life. I have to be honest, reader, there have been many, many days when the fact that I'm alive has not been nearly enough to make me sing. Not even close.

So... what else is there? On some days the leaves are beautiful, and I'm happy to be breathing. But then the weather changes, and so do my circumstances. Both of them pass by in ever-changing seasons. There must be more, and the Good News is that there is more.

I have reason to sing because I know the One who keeps the blood pumping through my veins and the air flowing in and out of my lungs. I have reason to sing because I know the One who will decide when the blood will stop flowing and my body will stop breathing. And I can delight in the beautiful red hues of dying autumn trees because I know the One who created them, and I know the One who shed His own blood and died on a tree so that I could have life in Him.

A Very Good Place to Start

Since graduating with a degree in English literature almost a year and a half ago, I've struggled to maintain discipline in my writing. And by "I've struggled" I mean I've failed miserably. I'm no Annie Dillard or Henry David Thoreau, who hide themselves away from the world and tinker and strain with words for hours and days and weeks on end. First of all, I'm an extreme extrovert, so seclusion for even one day depresses me. Secondly, I am easily distracted, and, let's be honest, writing takes a serious amount of dedication and focus and editing and editing and editing. As a result, I have two, maybe three, small-ish writing projects to show for the last sixteen months of my life (one of which is a collaborative story about a little brown duck named Reggie. Awesome, right?).

Graduation from college means freedom from assignments, but that freedom, at least for a writer, means you have to come up with your own structure and discipline. Thus, a blog.

I've actually toyed for months with the idea of writing one: "Maybe I should write a blog... No, I won't write a blog. Everyone is writing a blog! How would mine be different than anyone else's? What if people don't read it? What if people do read it? And what in the world would I write about anyway?"

You see my reluctance. I realized recently, though, that whether or not people read it, I need something that will help me to write regularly. (That is, write regularly without having to be alone in a cabin in the woods for weeks on end.) Ultimately, it doesn't matter if no one reads my writing. Don't get me wrong, reader -- whoever you are, I want to serve you well. I hope I entertain you and challenge you too. But I think this will be a challenge for me more than anything else. Writing is easy. Writing with consistency and excellence for God's glory is not. And that is what I'll be straining to do, no matter who reads it.

So I'm not too worried about those months that I didn't write. I'm writing now.