A Friday Note: October Light, Opening the Door, One Day
A Friday letter from my kitchen table, with the back door open to October light and some lovely flowers planted by me.
I am glad Stephanie Weinert tagged me in her Friday post to share my 7 Quick takes or Friday Intro. I had already been thinking it’s Friday, and wanting to share an intro. I miss those simpler days on here when we would just show up, share a few honest, real thoughts on a Friday include some pretty images, and not worry about whether it was tidy, “PC”, or if there would be consequences for sharing what we believed.
So here is my Friday intro. This reflection isn’t a typical Friday Intro list, but maybe more of a door slightly cracked open. Sorry, but I prefer to go deep.
So I opened my back door, (I’ve written about my opened my front door recently too) let the October light in, and took a photo (well, truth is, it was from yesterday)—flowers I planted greeting me each morning, and me choosing to step back into the frame after a long season of standing just outside it. It still feels wonky and takes a surprising amount of faith, hope, love, and courage just to stand there again. It still doesn’t feel right to step into the frame alone. As I wrote in 2020, “Finding a photo of me can be challenging, as I am usually behind the camera. Over the years, I’ve had a photo biz. My favorite is to take candid shots of families interacting. My biz motto was “Life as you picture it.”
This is the life I pictured, but it felt right to capture the moment, especially given I took a similar photo five years ago in the same place, only a week or so after Jon finished his first round of treatment. Oh, what a different life that was then.
We know the world has been heavy with grief and harsh headlines, and if you’ve been here for a while, you know my world has carried its own weight for quite some time. I am doing my best to rebuild this life piece by piece, day by day, while still trying to find joy in the midst of it. I’ve been in a season of noticing.
So, finding joy and creating beauty this October has been an enormous blessing. It has not come without a lot of prayer, discernment, nourishing my body and mind, sleeping hours, walking miles, protecting my peace, falling often and starting over again. In the spirit of Venerable Bruno Lanteri, I cling to the phrase: Nunc Coepi. Now I begin. I need that reminder every day (ask my daughter how I title each new page of a journal) because I fall and fail a thousand times a day.
“If I should fall even a thousand times a day, a thousand times, with peaceful repentance, I will say immediately, Nunc Coepi.”- Venerable Bruno Lanteri
Living in grief these past few years has taught me much about seasons and about people. Maybe I’ll tell that story another day. Maybe I really only want to tell you the good things I have learned on this journey and give the rest to God. Thanks to the friend who encouraged my writing for years and who recently reminded me this is my voice. You know who you are.
Today I want to say this: something in me is beginning to settle. The fog of grief is lifting. Maybe the weight is too. Yet I cried yesterday. Maybe my nervous system is finally exhaling a bit.
It wasn’t quick.
It took years of watching my husband suffer, holding life on the edge of breath, mourning his absence, guiding my children and then learning how to live again once the world went quiet. I’ve done the #griefwork—filtering out what no longer serves and fiercely holding onto what brings peace and life. There is a loss we must grieve when we choose the narrow path and filter out what doesn’t fit that along that path.
Maybe that’s what happens when we do the grief work—it makes room beauty to enter again.
Somehow, October has become my favorite month. Hard to believe, given the wretched October days I’ve lived through. And yet, the beauty of Autumn has captured my heart differently this year. The golden light, the crackle in the air, the way leaves burn before they fall—it has healed parts of my soul in a way I didn’t expect. I am grateful for the gift to create still, to make, to hold beauty in one hand and sorrow in the other.
I miss my husband like crazy, especially during this time of year. Oh, the fires we’d burn on the chilly Autumn evenings after digging in the dirt and doing fall clean-up in the yard. It was a favorite time in our house.
And I am still enjoying life. When Jon knew his life may be shorter than expected, he said we need to live now. So we chose to live.
Tragic would be the word if I refused to honor the life I still get to live. I have four incredible kids I get to walk this road with, who make getting up each day less lonely. Nunc Coepi.
Rebuilding a life from ashes is not glamorous work. It is strange and holy and gritty. We get lost in grief—we lose ourselves in it—and then we slowly find fragments along the way and hold them to the light. Someone told me recently, “You must have been loved really well growing up to have this confidence, determination, and resilience.”
I’ve pondered that thought since. The truth is more complicated. My childhood held its challenges. My parents loved me the best they could, I know for sure, my mom always built me up (maybe to a fault), but I had to decide not to stay stuck. Jon and I grew up inside our marriage together, patching the gaps of our pasts with love and trying to break cycles so our children wouldn’t inherit that ache.
What steadied me most was this: I knew a Good Father loved me, and that Jesus was a Friend who did not leave. Even when I felt alone, He remained. I have heard Him say to my heart more than once: “You got this, Heather—because I got you.”
As I type this, Christa Wells sings these lyrics from One Day in the background:
“You only keep moving by the grace of God. You’re doing one day, one breath, one prayer at a time. One word, one step, one hope. In a coming light.”
I often wonder why God keeps asking me to write and share vulnerable things. I’ve asked Him many times if I should keep writing or protect myself. But then the words come. And then the quiet messages follow, saying, “Please keep sharing.” So I keep the door cracked open.
I once explained the word “vulnerable” to my then-7th-grade daughter. I wrote about it here. She’s a senior now and we’ve learned so much about being vulnerable on this journey. The definition read: “willing to expose tender parts of yourself; willing to show your weaknesses, wounds, or your hurt.”
I have never been afraid to share the vulnerable, sensitive parts of my heart. I always joke, “I blame God, he made me this way. So take it up with him.”
Vulnerability risks judgment. But it is also what whispers to others: you are not alone.
For years, I stayed out of the frame because I wanted the words to stand on their own. I didn’t want to point to myself. Now I see that more as a widow. Many widows feel that pull—walking into a room aware of eyes, wondering if tears are welcome. Wondering what painful though well-meaning words need to be deflected. I have never been afraid of tears. Often, too many times, as a child I was told to stop crying when my heart was breaking. I am a tender soul who has weathered many storms. I may have the gift of tears. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.
Considering the idea of staying out of the frame I mentioned above, but wanting to show enough, I took a photo of myself. I can never get a selfie right.
I don’t show this to perform, but to mark this moment for me, and for my kids. A moment of the back door open, October light spilling in, a container of autumnal flowers I arranged sitting like a quiet offering, and the simple fact that I am still here.
Maybe more for my kids than anyone to say: I am opening the door again. For the ones who lingered in the doorway and did not leave. For those who honor tears and beginnings. And for those who waited patiently outside the door while the fire burned, who stayed, and gently asked — like that song I once wrote about in Come Close Now:
“Shall I brave the heat and come close with you now?
Can I come close now?”
Maybe that’s why Autumn feels like home to me. It knows something about fire and beauty coexisting, about drawing near even as things burn.
heather Lebano
Maybe that’s why Autumn feels like home to me. It knows something about fire and beauty coexisting, about drawing near even as things burn.
I say I love every season, but truthfully? I am an Autumn. I understand things that fall, blaze, and break open before they rise. And just maybe, don’t be surprised, come November and December, if I say this is my favorite season, too.
This reflection may not be a neat Seven Quick Takes, Friday Intro post. Consider it instead a Friday invitation into my heart, to its vulnerable parts, as I pick up pieces and pinecones (to create something new again), to show parts of myself as I rebuild from ashes and open the door slowly.
The doors stays open.
To bountiful flowers.
To October light.
To creating beauty
To new moments.
To healing that comes slowly.
To beauty that returns after heartbreak.
To grief and joy, learning how to live in the same house.
If you’re rebuilding, grieving, creating, or just catching your breath—come in.
May we keep the door open to beginnings, to small resurrections, to grace that meets us when we dare to begin again.
Nunc Coepi. Now we begin. In Autumn.
“Though it’s more than you thought
You only keep moving
By the grace of God
You’re doing one day, one breath, one prayer
One thing at a time
One word, one step, one hope
In a coming light
Don’t try to swallow the ocean
Keep doing one day
‘Til one day you’re free”
You could escape in a daydream
But you’d wind up right back here
Up to your waist in the maybes
It’s no use hiding on the back stairs
Hear the peculiar voice in the forest
Calling “open the doors”
It’ll take a few battles
To win this war.”-Christa Wells
