Aggressively beautiful.

Autumn is a special time to live in the City of Trees.

Right now I’m looking out my kitchen window and see the tops of trees poking their heads up and over the roofs of nearby buildings, sunbeams making them glow.

What was once a pallet board of varying green tints has now become yellows, oranges, deep reds, bright reds, burgundies, and browns—enthusiastic paint swatches that shine like they’re the only trees on the street.

Trees are honestly kind of aggressive about communicating how beautiful they are and how stunning they can be in their season of transformation. It’s very much in your face. You have no choice but to take it in. They’re unabashed in their desire to be noticed and insatiable in their attention-seeking.

They’re unabashed in their desire to be noticed and insatiable in their attention-seeking.

Maybe that’s for good reason.

This final stage in the cycle of life is telling the stories of their springs and summers and this is their one final push at sharing the tale before the dormancy of winter. Colors burst right before fluttering to the ground to their deaths, their rest, decay, and composting to return in a different form next year.

It makes me wonder: what’s bursting forth with color in my life right now?

I’m changing, no doubt. We always are.

But what stories of my spring and summer are the layers of change telling?

What, in your life right now, is aggressively putting forth beauty, and how can you stop to admire it?