Rustling leaves

Know what it's like to be picking up wet soggy leaves when it's frigid outside? Your fingers are numb, the wind making the skin on your face feel like cold plastic? If you have hands like mine, the cold makes your skin crack, causing you to bleed ever so easily. And the leaves, oh the leaves are sooo heavy.

But, do you know what it's like to rake up leaves on a cool, dry autumn day? Sun shining, a cool, crisp, but refreshing fall wind keeping your body cool as you scramble to gather the leaves into a pile and stuff them effortlessly into brown paper bags before the wind frustrates your efforts and blows them all away? And yet, even when that happens, if it's a free morning, it doesn't matter entirely. The work is light, the leaves (provided you don't have 40 bags equivalent to fill and the wind's not too strong) aren't a bother, and it's great just to hear the rustling leaves, feel the cool wind, soak up the sun, and be outside, working. You feel like the body God gave you is been used well, and you're the one benefiting the most in the process if only because you're outside and enjoying the weather.

You could say (although in the course of writing the analogy, I got carried away by fall fever and took it a bit far, explained it a bit more in detail than I initially anticipated) that my days over the past 2 weeks have been more like the wet, soggy, heavy leaves. My headaches have frustrated my recovery and procedures have confused or at least prolonged identifying their source. Headaches to me, in many ways, are like cleaning up leaves in the fall when the weather is horrible, and the leaves are wet, your hands cracked and freezing cold, and the piles just monstrous.

BUT! This morning was the first morning in a long while when I didn't wake up and immediately feel the effects of headaches. You could say that the leaves are no longer wet, soggy, and heavy; they are light and crumbly. I only hear them rustling in the background and no longer feel them lying heavy in my head, crushing my brain, bruising my energy.

At least, that is the hope. As I've just overheard my Dad say of me, "He's not quite out of the woods yet." Ironic. He has no idea of this post, and yet his line fits perfectly into my analogy. Nice!

Because, as we all know, fall is 100% better when every last annoying leaf, wet or dry, has been stuffed into brown paper bags and hauled away. I hope that now all that I'm waiting for is the trucks to arrive.