Cooler temperatures, inviting fires, harvest time, the colorful hillside. There are so many things to love about fall. One reason I love Illinois is the beauty and opportunities all four seasons bring, however, fall is my absolute favorite. Sadly, it lasts about three months with only three weeks in October being the pinnacle of the season. This is all the more reason to live this season, yea every season, on purpose.
The old quote carries much truth: “There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.” Those of us who are in the fall of our life understand how quickly time flies by. I hate to sound morbid, but I am starting to realize I have many more falls behind me than before me. It causes me to ask, how will I spend this fall? Even more important, how will I spend the fall of my life?
It is such a temptation in this fast-paced world to let life dictate to us our terms and schedules. We have work responsibilities, church responsibilities, homeschool responsibilities, extended family responsibilities, sports, maintenance … There seems to be no end. We cannot do it all, and we cannot have it all. How do we manage? Here are a few suggestions.
First, realize that children see time and activities differently than we adults. My wife once told me that my children would not remember how much time I spent with them, only that I did spend time with them. Allow me to illustrate.
My oldest daughter started hunting with me when she was four. She is now thirty. She recently told me how many wonderful memories she had of our time in the woods together. It dawned on me that she thought we went hunting all the time. When I told her we went once a week or once every other week, she looked at me in disbelief. In her mind, she thought it was three or four times weekly. This is the way your child’s mind works. I wish I would have spent more fifteen minutes playing Matchbox cars with my sons in the evening or sat and listened to more in-house piano recitals. My thought was, if you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all. This was wrong. Remember, any effort you make, regardless of how small, is magnified in your child’s mind.
Next, brainstorm some activities. These can be divided up between a few hour’s time frame to perhaps an overnighter. What things can you do that would only take a couple hours? A walk through a local woods or nature preserve doesn’t take long. If you spend a few minutes in preparation, you can have your children collect leaves for a short science lesson or talk how animals act in the fall for biology. A fall scavenger hunt could add to the excitement. You could even pack a little lunch or special snack to make the walk even more memorable. This does not have to break the bank of money or time, but it will stand out as a special memory to your child.
For other, bigger events, look at your personal calendar and write down these dates first. If you do not put the big rocks in first, they will be crowded out by other, less important activities. Obviously, you can only do so many of these events, so you must be strategic. Instead of going away for an entire weekend camping trip, you could camp in your back yard. It doesn’t take much time or space to set up a tent and get a few pieces of wood to have a fire. My kids especially loved it when I cooked pancakes over an early-morning fire, still leaving me time to go to work.
To make bigger events more memorable, you should spend time hyping it up by talking about it several weeks in advance. You can look things up on the web about your activity and make a loose itinerary as a group. After all, the greatest thing about vacation is the looking forward to it. Once again, think of little things that might make it special like a visit to a local ice cream joint, a round of putt-putt, or visiting a historic sight. A few years ago we had a boys trip to Washington D.C. Enjoying history, we went to numerous Civil War battlefields as well as the Mall. What was really interesting was when we went to Arlington Cemetery, they had spent time previously looking up all the graves they wanted to find from war heroes to Arctic explorers. It was great to see them looking for forty tombs out of the four hundred and thirty thousand.
A little intentionality can go a long way. Since autumn will be here quickly and then gone, what can we do to add some spice to this season. What is true with fall is true with life. We need to be intentional about the time we have. It is not a matter of cramming as much in as we can but making sure we get the big things done first. If we do that, the fall of our lives may be the most spectacular season of all.
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