Why This Season Stills My Soul

Crimson leaves float to the ground. Cinnamon candles scent our home. Harvest pumpkins fill patches and churchyards. Burnt orange scarves pair with flip-flops. Football hums on the TV in the background

It’s Florida. It’s fall. It’s my favorite time of year.

I’ve tried to understand why this season elicits such warmth in my soul. Because autumn’s really just nature’s call to dormancy. It announces the end is coming. It’s a shutting down, a quieting. It’s a reminder of winter’s song—peace be still.

And in the chaos of life, it’s what I need. Fall tells me to float softly down with dazzling colors from the high branches. It gently reminds me to let loose what holds me tight to scary heights and come back to the gentle earth. Fall sighs slow.

But also? This brilliant season with its deep hues calls me back to my deep roots. It whispers the important thing. It murmurs on the tight breezes what matters most.

Family.

The sounds of Hank, Kenny, Willie, and Dolly draw me. Their twangs and strums remind me of chilly nights with Daddy and my Uncles strumming guitars around campfires singing the greats.

Apple cider and cloves smell like Momma’s kitchen and Grandma’s pies. Pumpkin patches and hayrides call me like my cousins a hootin’ and a hollerin’ through my childhood dressed as cowboys laughing as we ran through fields of tall waving grasses.

Costumed characters skipping down the street bring sweet pictures to mind of homespun robots created from cardboard boxes and aluminum foil—a simple way of life. A life without perfected Pinterest or the weight of its lofty goals.

The autumn season is a call to simplicity in the gathering of family.

Because I get so caught up. Wedged into this crazy-never-stop life of car pools and homework, this season of sleepless nights and constant momma, momma, momma. Busy seems to be my occupation and slowing down an elusive vacation.

But fall.

Fall reminds me to drink in the smells. Stroll through corn mazes. Relish the search for the perfect pumpkin. This season calls me to the slow. To give my children the memories I cherish from my own youth.

Because I don’t want them to remember rushing through fall. I don’t want their memories of this season to be of dashes through grocery stores for last minute ingredients. Of screaming momma saying hurry, hurry, hurry. Of harried visits to the pumpkin patch just to snap a few Instagram-worthy shots of plastered happy.

Instead, I want real happy. I want the moments of lingering. I want the drinking-apple-cider-snuggled-in-blankets-under-the-stars moments. Their memories may not be of uncles around a campfire—that’s not their life. But I want their falls to be memories of family.

And so I cherish this season for its call. It’s potential to gather in our souls, tying our heartstrings together while displaying our brilliant, warm colors. Because this is fall—the reminding of the slow and the importance of drawing near to each other.