Surrender

Every fall, I wage a war with the leaves on my front lawn.

My compulsive brain craves neatness.
Tidiness.

I rake.
I mow.
I bag.

And yet—

The next day they are invariably back again.
More than before.
Littering everything.
Driving me mad.

It is a lesson I don’t want to learn.

Mother Nature keeps whispering,
“You want it to be this way?
But Lisa… this is how it is.”

That quiet hum of surrender.

Surrender.

We must surrender.

We want to control everything.
We can control nothing.

The leaves are leaves.
They will fall, and they will blow, and they will brown.

I am me.

I can be bothered by them—
or…
I can appreciate that with their wild chaos comes an unrestrained beauty.

Leaves coat everything.

But the squirrels don’t mind.
The trees don’t mind.
No one minds but me.

Let it be as it is.
Stop trying to make it different.

Surrender.

Trust that chaos has a purpose—
one which it is not my job to understand.

And that what I resist…
Is usually what helps me grow the most.

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