Let it Fall: A Beautiful Death

How can a season of "dying" be so beautiful?

I was walking while Benji was biking. The sidewalk paved perfectly under a canopy of trees, colors so bright and beautiful, not even the best camera could truly capture its perfection. I had a sudden urge to pick up a leaf beneath my feet. I second guessed the urge, thinking it childish. I’m a grown adult, I don’t need to be bending over and picking up leaves like a little kid, I thought. But the urge didn’t go away at my chiding. I sighed and hoped no one watched me crouch down to search through a pile of leaves for one I wanted. Not one was perfect, but each was absolutely unique. I picked two, smiled, twirled the stem in my fingers and walked on. Benji, who had stopped a couple times on his bike for me to catch up stopped again. He put out the kickstand and parked his bike on the corner, not to wait for me, but to pick up his own leaves. A huge smile swept across my heart. I guess someone did see me after all. When I approached him, I expected him to show me the leaves he wanted to keep. Instead, he extended his little arm to me as if presenting me a rose, and said, “Here, I got this one for you.”

He turned away without a second thought and rode on ahead of me not knowing the impact of this gesture to me.

What are you telling me, Lord? I whispered with tears glistening, knowing very well where He was taking me with this. I had sensed it was the Holy Spirit urging me to pick up the leaf to begin with.

I had been feeling defeated. So deeply defeated this year. Like anything I tried to do whether to help my girls or help myself didn’t work. Because creative writing is my best expression of human experience and emotion, I wrote a poem in my journal earlier this year, and here's an excerpt from it:

The amount of “life pearls” I’ve offered this year that have been traded in for lies instead - is gutting actually. I mean like, life-saving, keeping-you-out-of-destruction and hope-securing advice, but it fell on deaf ears. I felt frustrated with God, too, like, why give me all this wisdom and love to not be able to use it and instead watch them hurt, fall, break, devastate. I asked God on the plane ride home, “Can I just not care so much anymore? It hurts to care this much.” And He said, “What if you could still care as much as you do but not worry instead?” 

Thanks, God, but easier said than done.

So He showed me instead. With a leaf. An image I used earlier in the year when writing in my journal. 

God spoke to me now through Benji, redeeming this image of a leaf. With a dying leaf that was nothing but extraordinary. Colors so vibrant a grown woman had to bend over and admire a pile before choosing one, unique in its imperfection. Just like God’s children. All of His children. Every single one of us. Dying can be beautiful. Death of control-seeking, self-protecting, letting go. Caring just as much, but worrying less by letting the leaf fall, because it’s beautiful that way. God is in control of not just the leaf but the seasons, and the tree, and me. So I can release myself from the pressure of being perfect, from saying the “right” words… If only she would have listened! If only I would have said it this way instead…

And then God steps in to remind me: “You see, Kate? He picked up the leaves because he watched you do it. Not because you told him to. You are so frustrated about the words of life, the warnings, the advice and protection you offer your daughters and they reject or ignore it. But keep living. Keep picking up the leaves like a little kid. You are MY daughter. And it is My pleasure that they model after you. They will hear you speak and the enemy will twist your words; they will hear you speak and throw it back at you; they will hear you speak and ignore it. But they will see you forgive and they will, too; they will see you admit when you’re weak, and they will ask for help, too; they will see you pick up a dying leaf and call it beautiful, and they will see beauty from ashes, too. They watch you, my child, and they see Me. That’s ALL I have ever asked you to do.”

A leaf. Free. Free of worry and control. Free to fall, free to die to self to provide something beautiful. Oh yes, death can be beautiful when it gives true life.

“Truly, truly I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” -John 12:24

“But I have come that you may have life, and have it in the full!” – John 10:10